Mark 15:34-41, CEB At three, Jesus cried out with a loud shout, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani,” which means, “My God, my God, why have you left me?”
After hearing him, some standing there said, “Look! He’s
calling Elijah!” Someone ran, filled a
sponge with sour wine, and put it on a pole. He offered it to Jesus to drink,
saying, “Let’s see if Elijah will come to take him down.” But Jesus let out a loud cry and died.
The curtain of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to
bottom. When the centurion, who stood facing Jesus, saw how he died, he said,
“This man was certainly God’s Son.”
Some women were watching from a distance, including Mary
Magdalene and Mary the mother of James (the younger one) and Joses, and Salome.
When Jesus was in Galilee, these women
had followed and supported him, along with many other women who had come to
Jerusalem with him.
Today,
we reach the point in Mark where Jesus dies.
Surrounded by strangers (no disciples present in Mark’s gospel), enemies,
and contingent of Roman soldiers, Jesus makes His last statement lamenting God’
seeming absence. Then, with an agonizing guttural cry, He breathes His last
breath. Even this last statement is
misunderstood by those present, making the loneliness even more profound. I invite you to spend a few moments meditating
on those last moments from Jesus’s point of view. This is difficult, if not painful to do, but
it helps us grasp the depth of the gift God gave us in this moment.
Mark,
as well as other gospel writers, note that in this moment, “The curtain of
the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.” Whether this physically happened of not,
what is being conveyed is that, in the moment of His death, Christ’s achieves a
monumental achievement. Before this moment,
only the High Priest could safely enter (and even then, only once a year) the most
sacred part of the Temple, the Holy of Holies.
This small inner sanctum of the Temple was where the Ark of the Covenant
was kept and the section was walled off by an enormous curtain wall. This is where God was believed to be
present. By declaring this curtain wall “torn
in two,” Mark is announcing that no intermediary
(ie…the High Priest) is needed to access the presence of God. Christ’s sacrifice makes it possible now for
anyone to approach God directly.
Mark
makes sure to highlight the fact that the only person present to recognize that
this is an incredible, world-shifting event is a Roman centurion. He does so by marveling, “this man was
certainly God’s Son.” This only
magnifies what we just noted about anyone being able to have a direct relationship
with God, for even a Roman soldier now has been given the spiritual sensitivity
to recognize that everything has now changed.
Others, who are looking for Elijah to show up, have missed the import of
the moment altogether.
Finally,
we have the women, standing off at a distance, who have watched all this take
place. It is surprising and significant that
Mark even mentions this detail, but He does so for important reasons. First, these are the witnesses to the fact
that Jesus actually died. It was not a
trick or a hoax. Real people saw Jesus
die. Rumors persisted even to the time of
Mark’s gospel first being circulated that Jesus’s death was somehow staged or
faked. Mark puts these rumors to rest
with eyewitness testimony. The fact that
the witnesses are women makes the same point that John makes in multiple other
ways in his gospel. No longer are women
on the sidelines of religious life.
Their testimony is a crucial part of the sacred scriptures now. This will change the status of women
forever. We can trace the embrace of
women clergy and other central leadership in the church back to this moment.
Spend
some time contemplating these aspects concerning the moment of Jesus’s death. Compose your own prayer today in response to
that time of reflection.
Questions: What questions
do you have about the death of Jesus?
Prayer: I encourage
you to write your own prayer for today based on your experience of this passage.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for women in leadership of all kinds today.
Song: Were You There –
Andrea Thomas
No comments:
Post a Comment