Law & Grace - Matthew 27:33-56 Crucifixion - what was seen

I am here to tell you a story. Oh, first let me introduce myself. I'm Valerius Maximus. And I'm here to tell you a story about something that happened about 10 years ago. Oh, and it was a crucifixion. We've done lots and lots. I've lost count of how many. But this was one crucifixion I will never forget. So let me tell you about this. First, we started the day like we did every day, eating the breakfast of champions. That's starting with a small loaf of bread and some fermented fish paste. Oh, don't let that gross you out. I had officer quality fermented fish paste.

Well, anyway, we started off the day like usual, like any other day. But there was one criminal who stood before a pilot who was different from all the others. And it was a man named Jesus who was called the Christ. He was presented before Pilate on Dies Veneris. I think you call that Friday. I don't know why you call it Friday, but anyway. All the Jews had celebrated Passover the night before. And by sundown that very day, it would be the Jewish Sabbath.

So we had to operate in very short timeframes. We had to respect the Jews times between their holy days. And so me and my men carried out our duty, duties that included constraining the prisoners and then taking them away when they're sentenced and things of that sort, always keeping the prisoners under control. Now, as soldiers, it is not our job to judge, and so, in fact, we try not to pay too much attention to these sorts of things, since raising questions, asking questions, is not a good idea.

But we did notice that Jesus' interaction with Pilate was quite different. Pilate seemed unusually eager to get this case out of his hands. He wanted to pass it off to somebody, or if not that, at least let Jesus off without any punishment. And I'd never quite seen that before. Jesus didn't have the usual defensive character and loud criminal behavior. As a matter of fact, he didn't defend himself at all. Never seen that before.

Our place, of course, as soldiers is to carry out whatever sentence the governor lays down. We're to be long in action and short on words. We're certainly never to ask questions or to question the sentence of the governor. That would not be our place.

But Jesus was handed over to us first to be scourged, and then we would take him out for crucifixion. So these soldiers under my direction began scourging Jesus. Now, the scourging, I had to make sure that they didn't go too far because Jesus had to also be crucified. Sometimes the scourging was so bad, so severe, that men didn't live through the scourging. So Jesus, I told them, must live through this in order to be crucified. We can't have him die from the scourging.

But as I noticed as they were beating Jesus that he didn't yell out a bunch of profanity like most of them typically do or spew out a bunch of wrath as was typical. He was very different. Jesus was different and I didn't know why, at least not yet. As my soldiers led Jesus along the path to where we would crucify him to get him out of the city, Jesus' beaten body would not bear the weight of the cross. It was heavy timber after all. He collapsed onto the stones down below and the cross on top of him.

So my soldiers are allowed by the laws of the empire to press anyone that they saw along the way into service so that they themselves do not have to bear the cross. They do, after all, need to keep control of the situation and not be distracted by that. So one of my soldiers demanded that one of the passers-by, one of the passers-by, carry Jesus' cross. And it went like this. He said, You! Carry His cross! No? Is that your final answer? That's what I thought. And that's the way it went.

And so this man, I think his name was Simon or something, came and carried the cross all the way out to the hill. The man was forced to carry the cross to this place that's called the Skull. We call it Calvary in Latin and Golgotha in Hebrew, at least that's what they tell me. My soldiers and I also brought along two other criminals to be crucified. There were just three that day. These two other men were clearly guilty. Jesus, I was not so sure. But these two other men were vile and typical prisoners. And following him was a large crowd of people and the women who were mourning and lamenting Jesus.

But Jesus turned to them and said, Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nurse. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us and to the hills cover us. For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?

I never had any prisoners behave like that. They all wanted all the sympathy they could get and to tell them, ah, stop the weeping. That was very different. What happened next was a duty we had lots of practice in carrying out. Me and all of my soldiers had done it hundreds, if not thousands of times. I didn't really need to direct the soldiers. They knew exactly what to do. And there were only three to crucify this day. And Jesus wasn't offering any resistance.

So that made it even easier. Well, so what that did was help me to be able to observe. In fact, Jesus was cooperating, saying, let's do this. I'd never seen that before. Here was a man dying on purpose, with purpose. So the soldiers placed a nail in each wrist at the base of the hand and one through both feet. Efficient, isn't it?

Since they knew what to do, I could just observe, and I'm glad that I did. The crucifying took place about 9 a.m. For a while, Jesus seemed to focus on communicating key information to or about people that were before him in the area around the cross. At first, the two criminals on each side of Jesus just railed at him, mocked him, demanded things of him in anger and wrath.

And everyone else went along with it while my men gambled over his clothing. And then they joined in with everyone else with all the railing. Ah! King of the Jews! Yeah, get yourself down on. That's quite a throne you got. Save everybody. Save them. Save yourself. You claim to be the Son of God? What are you doing hanging up there bleeding?

On orders from Pilate, we placed a sign over Jesus' head. We didn't do that very often. There was an inscription in three languages. There was an inscription in Hebrew, an inscription in Latin, and an inscription in Greek. But all three of them said, Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews. The character of Jesus, who is called the Christ, And the years of experience of my men allowed me to observe people and events at that crucifixion far more closely. And to this day, I'm glad I did.

Jesus was of such a different character than any other man that we ever crucified. One of the criminals next to him, and I saw this with my own eyes, who started off railing at Jesus and mocking him and saying foul things, he began to change. I had never seen that. Never. He had a radical change of heart right there on the cross. One of the criminals who were hanging there was hurling abuse at him, saying, Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.

But the other answered, rebuking him, said, Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. And he was saying, Jesus, Remember me when you come in your kingdom." And he, Jesus, said back to him, truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise.

About the middle of the day, when the sun ought to have been the brightest, the sky darkened instead. I had never seen anything quite like that, and never in the middle of a crucifixion for sure. That also got my attention. From that moment on, Jesus stopped saying things to other people. Instead, he looked to be in great pain. I would say even growing pain. As the three o'clock hour approached, and it was getting time that we needed to make sure that they were all dead, in order to have them off the crosses by Sabbath at sundown. But as three o'clock approached, big things began to happen. Not with others, but most certainly with Jesus.

He yelled out, Eloi! Eloi! Lama Sabachthani! I asked what seemed like a knowledgeable man. What's he doing? What's he saying? I think he's calling for Elijah. That sounded kind of odd to me, so I asked someone else. Someone who was standing there and the person said, he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I pondered that for a long time.

This man was doing something up there besides dying. Then Jesus said, and I remember this, he said, I'm thirsty. He was given some sour wine and vinegar on a stick. And then Jesus said one word. I thought it very strange. He said one word that meant paid. All paid. Completely paid. As if a debt were paid. What debt? What was paid? What was he doing? And then, Jesus finally said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Similar to when my men crucified Jesus, and Jesus chose to be crucified. He voluntarily was crucified. He also gave up his spirit voluntarily. His life was not taken from him.

At Jesus' death, an earthquake struck, tearing the rocks apart and later that day I heard the tombs were open and the veil, boy it is thick, you can see it from standing in the temple courtyard, the veil was torn in two from top to bottom. These are things that you don't forget. As my men, as well as many others, saw those puzzling and amazing events. At that point, I didn't care what anybody else thought. I came up to that cross and I glorified God. I openly said that we had crucified an innocent man and truly this was the Son of God. There was much I didn't understand, but that much I could tell. Now, Sabbath was approaching, so we had to make sure that the bodies were off the cross in order to keep the Jews from being upset.

So all the dead men had to be taken down. Well, Jesus was dead, but the other two were not. So he broke the legs of the two criminals so that they suffocated. You see, in crucifixion, The feet are put together and you push on your feet so you can get a breath and then you go down. So when you break the legs, there's no pushing on your feet and the men suffocated to death. That's the way we do it. We're Romans, you know.

But knowing that Jesus had died already, I asked one of my men to simply pierce his side with his pylum. blood and water came out separated. So Jesus was clearly dead from before when he said he gave up his spirit. Well some men had asked for the body of Jesus. They went to Pontius Pilate and I don't even know who it was but they asked that they take the body And so Pontius Pilate wanted to make sure, is Jesus really dead? We don't want to have him not be dead here. And so I was called, I testified to Pilate that Jesus was indeed dead. So Pilate granted that the body of Jesus could be taken and prepared for burial by these men. A number of other Roman soldiers, not in my group, were assigned to watch Jesus' tomb. And so they stood outside. Oh, there were about 16 of them, I think, standing around the tomb.

Well, when I had a chance later on, I told my centurion friend Cornelius what I had seen that day. Cornelius, like me, had a regard for the God of the Jews. That was about 10 years ago. And now I must tell you what my friend Cornelius just told me. He told me that one of Jesus' disciples named Peter had just spoken to him days ago. Cornelius told me the meaning of what I had witnessed that day. And let me tell you, this is wonderful news.

He said that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world and that would explain Why, he said, paid and died voluntarily. He paid a debt we could never pay. He died for you and for me. That was the news. He died in my place. Instead of me, he suffered silent agony. Instead of me, he took the pain, the misery. And in that silent breath, He died alone, a sinner's death, instead of me. All other men who are crucified aren't doing much or going anywhere. But Jesus was doing a massive work that day, for you and for me, all of us.

Now I understand why Jesus told that one thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise. I know the meaning of those words now. Jesus was buried and then rose again early on Dias Salas. I think you call that Sunday. And Peter told Cornelius that more than 500 people had seen Jesus risen, including Peter himself, several times. in different places.

Now, having seen what I've seen and having heard what I've heard, I believe all that. Nobody ever lived like Jesus lived. Nobody ever died like He died, and I will testify to that personally. Nobody ever rose from the dead like Him, and I believe in Him. And that's the very important thing that I have to tell you today.