From the Mouth of a Pagan

Part Seven: The Son of God tears down the curtain

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:37-38, NIV)

Jesus was dead

This was not the plan.

This was not what the disciples had envisioned when they started following the Rabbi.

This was not what anyone was hoping for when the fervor surrounding Jesus began to swell.

God’s Anointed One could not die…right?

Well…

Jesus was dead.

God moves beyond the curtain

There are various ways to interpret this image of the curtain being torn—literal, symbolic, or otherwise. Whichever perspective you take, the theological truth behind this single sentence is significant and has been discussed in depth over the centuries. The image of the curtain being torn was vivid to Mark’s readers (even if it is not so immediately apparent to us) and points to the departure of God’s presence from the temple. Up until this point, God’s presence was believed to dwell in the Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the temple. The Holy of Holies could be accessed only rarely and only by carefully selected priests. In Jesus Christ, however, God became present beyond the curtain of the Holy of Holies, beyond the courts of the temple, and beyond the people of Israel alone.

Tragically, Israel tended to wrongly view the temple as a symbol that they were “God’s only true people and that God’s presence was to be restricted only to them.” (Dean Flemming, “Why Mission,” Kindle 508)

The kingdom of God in our midst

In Acts, Luke would later write that “the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands” (Ac 17:24, NIV).

Paul would write in his letters to the Corinthians that “your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19, NIV) and “we are the temple of the living God” (2 Cor 6:16, NIV).

The kingdom of God was not limited to defined spaces accessible only by specially chosen people on special days. No, the kingdom of God is now in our midst! (Lk 17:21).

From the mouth of a non-Jewish pagan

The words of the centurion in the original Greek are not clear. His words could be translated to mean “the Son of God,” as most English translations today translate it. However, it could just as likely mean “a son of god” (a righteous man or a great leader believed to be a god, as Augustus was thought to be).

It seems unlikely that a Roman centurion would have the religious background to proclaim Jesus as “the Son of God” or even know what that term may have meant. Whatever his words may have been intended to imply, Mark is certainly making clear the point that he is trying to make—that Jesus is the Son of God!

It is somewhat ironic that of all the people to witness Jesus’ death and make a statement like this, it was a non-religious, likely uneducated, low-level Roman military leader—a Gentile! At the same time, the high priest who witnessed the same scene rejected Jesus’ true identity as the Messiah!

This was not what anyone expected—the Messiah, Sent One, and Anointed One—dead on the cross. As Jesus’ body hangs lifeless on the wood, as the twelve have fled, and as confusion reigns in the hearts and minds of all who have expected a very different outcome, a glimpse of an impending paradigm shift comes from the mouth of the most unlikely of people on the scene.

The high priest (one of the few who had communed with God in the Holy of Holies) cannot see what God is doing right before his eyes. Yet, from the mouth of the centurion (a man serving under the power and authority of Caesar, who himself claimed to be a son of god), Mark gives the identity of the Messiah, the Son of God, by way of the confession of a non-Jewish pagan!

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This story is part five of an Easter series. Read parts 1-6 using the links below:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6