Sometimes when you are too close to something you cannot
see it. Or at least you cannot recognize what it is. You can
be so close that you do not know what you are looking at.
You need somebody else to give you a fresh perspective.
My wife and I buy grocery items when they are on sale,
whether or not we need them at the time. We just store
them until we do need them, confident that we have saved
money. But of course you don’t save money if things go out
of date, so it’s important to store them in date order. It’s my
task to look for those “sell-by” dates and organize the
shelves. But now do you think I can see those dates? Do
you think I can read those little squiggles and codes that are
stamped on the packages? Not on your life! I stare and I
squint and I look at every possible angle on every possible
surface, and see nothing! I give up and put it down on the
shelf, and my wife comes along and says, “There it is, right in
front of you.” What was the problem? I was so close I didn’t
know what I was looking at. I needed somebody with a fresh
perspective. I needed to back off and let someone else see
it with new eyes.
Much of life, in fact, is like that. We cannot see what is going
on in our relationships because we are too close. We cannot
understand when our marriages are going bad because
we’ve spent ten or twenty or thirty years enmeshed in the
same behavior. We can’t figure out what’s going on with our
children, because we have so much tied up in those kids.
We don’t understand why the supervisor on the job is
dissatisfied, because we are too filled up with our own stuff.
We are less than happy about our relationship to God,
because we’ve been in church since Day One, and we’re too
close to know our own hearts. So we go to a counselor to
get a fresh perspective. When you are too close to
something, you just can’t see it any more. You need the
insights of others who don’t come with excess baggage.
At the cross many human dramas play themselves out.
There are the enemies of Jesus, not content with His death,
but who are cheerleaders for cruelty, “He saved others; he
cannot save himself.” There are the common soldiers, just
doing their dirty jobs, dealing with this grim business by
tacking up a mocking sign, “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex
Iudeorum”, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Some
came to scoff, and some to do their jobs; and some came to
die – two thieves, common criminals – one of them
screaming off his searing pain with hostility, the other finding
a wonderful peace. Many human dramas play themselves
out at the cross.
But none are more compelling than the roles played out by
the friends of Jesus, who were too close to see what was
happening; and by the centurion who brought a fresh
perspective and saw the scene with new eyes.
At the final moment, when all is said and the deed is done; at
the crucial moment, when He breathed His last, and all
nature groaned with Him – when the silence fell like a storm
– when the eyes adjusted to the darkness – when the crowds
who had come for spectacle scurried home, afraid – when it
came down to it, there were two responses, two reactions.
The centurion, the officer, who spoke the most honest words
of the day, “Certainly this man was innocent” (or
righteous, or a son of God – the gospels differ slightly on
what he said). “Certainly this man was innocent and
righteous”. Certainly. He had come to know for himself
about this Jesus.
The centurion is one response. And the friends of Jesus are
the other – “All his acquaintances, including the women
who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance,
watching these things.” At a distance. I wonder: does
that mean that those who had been with Jesus could not now
grasp what was happening, because they had been so
close? But the centurion, with a fresh perspective, is able to
see it?
Some of us have been around Christ and the things of Christ
for a very long time. We were carried to church when we
were too young to have any grasp of what it was all about.
We have read the Bible, we have prayed, we have listened
to sermons – in case anyone is counting, this one is number
690 for me at Takoma! – we have listened to and preached
sermons, we have sung hymns, we have done it all. And for
us the cross may be old hat. For us it may be all too familiar.
We don’t feel any more. We don’t let it get to us any more.
We are able, like Jesus’ friends from Galilee, to stand around
at a distance and let it all wash over us. It’s Good Friday,
one more time, ho hum, we know the story. Maybe we are
altogether too close and we do not see any more what there
is to see at the cross.
But the centurion: consider him. He had every reason not to
arrive at this conclusion about the one on the cross. There
was every reason for him not to conclude that Jesus of
Nazareth was innocent or righteous or a child of God.
This centurion might have been callous, for example. He
must surely have participated in many executions. The
sound of hammer blows and the cry of anguished prisoners
must have fallen on deaf ears by now; you cannot do this
kind of work and actually pay attention, or you will go mad.
And so we might reasonably assume that any successful
officer in Rome’s army would be callous, unfeeling, cold,
without compassion.
Just as we who live in this community might easily become
callous to defend ourselves against the unending cries of
those in need. Just as members of this congregation might
easily become cold to protect our wallets against people who
come back, over and over again, asking for more and never
seeming to get themselves together. We could understand
this officer if he had become callous and unfeeling. It
happens to us too.
Or this centurion might easily have become cynical. If he
had spent much time in the province of Judea, he had seen
all kinds of scams and had witnessed all sorts of political
games. He had seen the various petty kings of Herod’s line
jockeying for position and favor. He had watched governors
come and go, depending on who caught the emperor’s
attentions. He had watched the Temple priests and the
distinguished gentlemen of the Sanhedrin working things out
to their own advantage, and he had taken note of the
patrician Sadducee party, very comfortable under Roman
patronage. This centurion, if he were an observant man, had
seen every political deal there was to see, and might have
written this crucifixion off as simply another payday for
somebody. Cynical.
Just as we who live in this city have learned to shrug our
shoulders as we learn of political deals and sweetheart
contracts and friends and relatives on the payrolls. We can
understand why this might be a cynical man. It’s all in the
political game.
And, more than that, this centurion, callous and cynical,
might also have been a skeptical man. A man who might
easily have given up on whatever gods there be. A soldier
who in the trenches had called on some god or another for
help, but had nothing but wounds and scars to show for it. A
Roman who was aware that the religion of his nation had
long since died in everything but for. A political realist who
could see that the only god that mattered was the self-styled
one on the throne in the distant capital city. A smart man,
who had been posted to Palestine long enough to know that
there had been plenty of wild-eyed fellows coming through
claiming to be God’s messiah. Oh, I feel sure that this
centurion, if he had any smarts about him at all, would have
swallowed a healthy dose of skepticism.
Just as we who are the church have learned to be skeptical
when our brothers claim that their prayers have been heard
or when our sisters testify that they have been healed. It’s
good to hear, and it’s inspiring – but a miracle? God doing
something special? We’re not so sure, are we? Even we in
the church are halfway skeptical and doubtful about the
whole thing.
And it is all because we are so close to it we cannot see it
any more. It is all because we have been around the cross
so long it no longer frightens us. We have been around
Christ so long He no longer awes us. We are used to Him,
and so we do not see Him for who He really is.
We need a fresh experience tonight. We need to be at the
cross as though we had never been here before. We need
to taste and smell and hear and touch and see an
experience that is our own. We need to go beyond our
callousness and our cold hearts, and feel the pathos of this
moment, so that we might learn again to feel the plights of
our brothers and sisters. We need to move past our
cynicism and feel the injustice of this moment, so that we
might take on those things that still plague our nation – its
racism, its materialism, its selfishness. And most of all, we
need to deal with our skepticism, we need to rekindle our
faith, we need to open up not only eyes and ears and hands,
but also our hearts, so that we might believe again. So that
we might radically trust this Jesus.
We have been drifting off to a distance. Maybe that is a
good thing. For we have been so close to Christ that we no
longer see Him for who He is. It is time for a fresh
encounter, like that of the callous, cynical, skeptical
centurion, who suddenly saw it all with clarity: “Certainly –
certainly – this man was innocent and righteous, the son of
God.” Step back, look again, feel again. Certainly -- at a
distance, that this man was – and is – and ever shall be –
our redeemer. Certainly.
