(Everything listed in parenthesis is either a stage direction or a comment meant to give information that was not verbalized as part of the actor’s monologue. Items used for this presentation were: a rented centurion outfit, a short sword, a cat of 9 tails, and a tube of tanning cream to give the appearance of a deeply suntanned soldier).
(The auditorium is completely dark, and the centurion enters from a side room. Lights are turned on as the audience sees him standing arrogantly, with one hand on his hip and his other hand holding a sheathed sword.
He slowly scans the audience).
My name is Markus Antonius, a centurion in the legions of Rome and stationed in the land of Judea.
(Slowly he begins to walk toward center stage).
For 25 years I have faithfully served my Emperor. Rising up from the lowest ranks, I have become the captain of 100 men in a regiment of 5000. I have fought in more battles than I care to remember in lands such as Greece, Persia and Carthage.
(Drawing his sword) My blade had shed the blood of hundreds upon the field of battle… and I had learned to fear nothing (blade extended with quiet menace toward the audience) and no one… for I have served in one of the mightiest armies that had ever marched upon the face of the earth.
But to be stationed in the land of Judea? (shaking his head smiling sadly as he half turns away) My sword has shed the blood of too many Judeans (sheathing his blade) and there was no honor in that. For they had no army. No force to face on the field of battle.
They were simply a pathetic, difficult, and backward country that hadn’t the sense to bow before the throne of Caesar.
Other nations accepted Caesar’s rule
Other people bowed the authority of Rome
But not these Jews… not these Jews.
We knew it was their religion, their faith in this one holy and righteous God which made their backs like iron and the made it impossible for them to bow the knee.
Privately we speculated that we would have to destroy their very temple for they would ever bow before Caesar.
They were a harsh, bitter and unkind people…
But to be fair not all of them were that way.
Some were kind to us, some were good.
And most of those were the ones who listened to the teachings of a rabbi known as Jesus.
We Romans laughed about this Jesus.
To us He was little more than an itinerant preacher who had nothing better to do with his time than to wander about the countryside preaching of peace and love.
We Romans knew that peace (his hand thoughtfully goes to the hilt of his sword) came by the edge of the sword. And love?... Love was something you purchased.
We were men of the world. We understood these things.
To us this Jesus was nothing more than a simpleton and a fool.
Lucius however, did not agree with us.
Lucius was my friend, and a fellow centurion. And he told me the strangest tale. (see Matthew 8:5-13)
It seems that his servant had become sick and was paralyzed an racked with pain. Lucius was beside himself because this was his favorite servant.
But then he heard about this rabbi who not only preached of love and peace, but – it was rumored – could heal someone by simply touching them.
The crippled were made to walk
The blind to see
And lepers were made whole again.
So my friend sought out this Jesus… and finally found him in a dirty backwater town.
“My servant,” he said, “is sick and in great pain. Will you come and heal him?”
And Jesus said that he would come at once and heal him.
But Lucius boldly said “No, that will not be necessary. I am a man of authority and I say to one man ‘do this’ and to another ‘do that.’ You have only to say the word and my servant will be healed.”
My friend told me that Jesus looked into his eyes and marveled. “Never in all of Israel,” Jesus supposedly said, “have I ever seen such faith. Return home and it will be done as you have asked.”
And Lucius told me that that very hour of the day, his servant rose from his bed and was completely healed.
(turning to a person in the audience)
Did that really happen?
I didn’t know.
I too was a religious man, and in my religion there were many stories of great healings and miraculous occurrences… most of which we knew were false.
So what did I know?
Then one day I met this Jesus.
He had been arrested the night before, and brought up before the leaders of His people.
They accused Him of being a heretic.
They said that He claimed to be the “Son of God!”
And they condemned Him to death.
But because Judea was under the authority of Rome, they had no authority to execute Him legally. So they brought Him to Pontius Pilate, the governor of that region.
They accused Jesus of being a traitor to Rome.
They said that He claimed to be King of Israel and He challenged the authority of Caesar himself.
This was a crime worthy of death on the cross, and if Pilate did not crucify this man, he was no friend of Caesar’s.
I was present when Jesus entered the room. And from the moment He stepped through the door I knew something wasn’t right.
Pilate was a man accustomed to sending hundreds of prisoners to their deaths. I had seen him sentence men to be crucified without even flinching. But as the interrogation proceeded it became increasingly apparent that Pilate was not judging this Jesus… Jesus was judging him.
Pilate’s unease only increased when his wife burst into the room and dragged him off to the side, warning him in low tones not to have anything to do with this righteous man because she had had a dream about Him in the night.
Pilate sought to spare Jesus the pain of the cross and so he instructed me to take him outside to the outer courtyard and have Him flogged.
(Centurion puts down sword and picks up the cat of 9 tails).
Flogging was a punishment usually reserved for the most hardened criminals.
Thirty, forty, fifty lashes and a man’s skin would hang from his back and chest in strips and the blood would pour from his wounds. One of every three men who were flogged died from this punishment.
When we were finished, my soldiers began to mock Him. They put a purple robe on His shoulders and fashioned a crown of thorns that they shoved down upon his head. “Hail King of the Jews!” they cried.
Then they blindfolded Him and spat upon Him, and struck Him. “Prophesy, O Son of God! Who was it that struck you?”
But He never spoke.
He never uttered a word.
He stood there as one who still had the authority of a man of power.
Finally, I returned Him to Pilate…
and Pilate – thinking to gain the sympathy of the crowds – led this man with his terribly beaten body, out before them.
“What would you have me do with this Jesus who is called the Christ?” he asked.
The chief priests and the Pharisees went amongst the crowd and whispered “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
And the crowds cried out “CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM!”
And at last, even though Pilate was uneasy about this Jesus…
he feared the crowds more and ordered me to take Him outside the walls of the city to a place called Golgotha and put Him on a cross.
(Centurion puts down cat-of-9-tails)
Crucifixion is one of the most terrible and cruel forms of execution known to man.
At one time, Rome required the common soldier to put prisoners upon the cross. But they soon discovered that this so demoralized the troops that they finally took to selecting one man who was the executioner.
This was normally a man of such great strength, that when it came time to pin a man’s hands and feet to the cross, with one blow he could drive the nails thru the flesh into the wood.
Roman soldiers who were assigned to stand guard of those dying on the cross often took to drinking large amounts of strong drink to dull their senses.
One soldier wrote “Of all the sounds in hell, none is more pitiable than those terrible cries through the silence of midnight, where crucified men hang in agony and cannot die while a breath of suffering remains.”
When men were being nailed to the cross they often would spit on us. They’d curse us, and threaten us and our families.
(Short bitter laugh)
But we all knew their threats were meaningless.
Once a man was placed upon the cross and raised into the sky, they would never come down again alive.
But Jesus was different.
He never spat at us,
or threatened us,
or cursed at us.
Like a lamb going to slaughter, He opened not His mouth.
At one point during the day, Jesus pushed up on his feet, which were pinned to the cross, and took air into His lungs. And He cried out “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
(repeated hauntingly) They know not what they do…
Initially I joined in the mocking and taunting of Jesus (pause) but then the darkness came.
It was noonday and the sun should have filled the sky. But instead, darkness came down like a curtain and the crowds scurried away. My own soldiers began to shrink back from His cross.
For three hours darkness reigned upon the earth. And at last, Jesus pushed Himself up again and breathed in one last gasp of air, crying out “It is finished!” and then He died.
(Pause) No sooner had He died then the earth began to shake beneath our feet and my men fell to their knees. I looked up at the man on that cross and said “Surely, this was the Son of God.”
Three days later it was rumored that this Jesus rose from the dead. Some of my own men told me that they were there when the earth shook once more beneath their feet, the stone rolled back from the grave. And there was no one to be found within the tomb.
Over 500 men were said to have seen this resurrected Jesus…
But I was Roman. I worshipped many gods.
Even if this man were actually a god, He would have simply been one of many.
But I couldn’t remove His words from my heart or the scenes of that day from my mind. I couldn’t shake the fact that I was guilty of this innocent man’s blood. I had been the one authority. It was I that ordered His death.
It was several years later that I encountered a man with the same name as myself. Mark. A follower of this Jesus (see note at the end of sermon).
A Christian he called himself. And I shared with him the experiences I had had on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion.
He told me that this Jesus had indeed been the Son of God. That His death had not been an accident, but was instead the very will of God. And that He had died to take away the guilt and shame of man’s sin.
I was guilty, he said, of Jesus’ death, but not because I had ordered His execution. It was my sin and selfishness and arrogance and pride that put Him on that cross.
In that moment I knew what this Christian was telling me was true. And I did what those Jews so long ago had failed to do before Caesar.
I knelt before this Jesus.
I bowed my will to His.
I died to the man I used to be and allowed myself to be buried in the waters of baptism as He had been buried so many years before. And I rose up from that grave, as He rose from His, to become a new man. A soldier now for Christ.
(Some observations: Though most of what I have presented here is fictional, I sought to make it as true to the motives and circumstances the centurion might have experienced in his day. For example, there are 2 other notable centurions listed in Scripture. One was the soldier whose servant was healed by Jesus in Matthew 8 and the other was Cornelius in Acts 10. Some have speculated that the Centurion at the cross was the same as one or both of these soldiers. However, since Scripture has not made that connection, I felt uncomfortable with those assumptions.
Others have presented the Centurion at the cross as becoming a Christian soon after Christ’s death. However, this also did not seem to be realistic. From what we can ascertain in the book of Acts, uncircumcized Gentiles were not included in the church till after the conversion of Cornelius recorded in Acts 10. Even then, the idea of an uncircumcised convert caused great division and difficulties in early congregations as evidenced by many of the references in the book of Acts and many of the Epistles.)
OTHER 1ST PERSON SERMONS
A Centurion’s Story = Matthew 27:50-27:54
The Night Of Darkness = Acts 12:1-12:19
My Name Is Noah = Genesis 6:1-9:17
A Burning Conversation = Exodus 3:1-3:6
