Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, March 29, 2024
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: It is because we have seen Jesus in his full personhood that we can profess faith in his full divinity.
Throughout this entire passage, the author of the Gospel of Mark is teasing at the idea of needing to see to believe. He describes how intensely the crowd around Jesus taunts him, challenging him to save himself. Using plays on words and references to Jesus’s prophecies and ministerial works, these people almost dare Jesus outright to show them something miraculous. Something that proves that the divine identity he has been claiming all this time is legitimate. While the majority of these onlookers are probably taunting Jesus rhetorically—convinced already that he is a fraud and not truly open to the idea that he could, actually be the son of God—it seems that they want to see Jesus do something that will help them know what to walk away believing. They want to be convinced.
But all Jesus does is wither. On the cross, he gives in and gives up, succumbing to the cruelty of the crowd and accusing God of abandoning him in the form of a question quoted from Psalm 22: “My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?” Only then do the people gathered around him get what they were asking for—a demonstration of the supernatural: a sudden darkening of the sky and a splitting of the temple curtain. As Jesus’s life comes to an end, it’s clear to everyone that something cosmically significant is unfolding. In fact, a Roman centurion (which is another word for a high-ranking military leader) comes right out and says, “Surely, this man was God’s son.” In other words, he saw. And now he believes.
But maybe it wasn’t the sudden darkening of the sky or the splitting of the temple curtain that moved the centurion. Maybe it was Jesus’s lament that made him stop and think. Maybe the raw despair, anguish, exhaustion and hurt he witnessed Jesus enduring was what the centurion considered miraculous. What kind of a God would love so deeply that they would take on that kind of pain? Why would the creator of the cosmos pursue this empathy in this gritty, bloody way? The centurion was marveling at the personhood of Jesus that came through in the crucifixion, and not in the periphery. He was floored by the substance and not by the flash. He realized that belief isn’t a game of convincing. It’s a matter of revelation. Belief isn’t being pushed toward this idea or that. It’s discovering or uncovering what’s been in front of you all along.
Can you remember a moment in which you really saw someone for who they are? Or maybe a moment in which someone really saw you for who you are? It’s a kind of vision that makes so many things make more sense than they did before, that ties you together in a new and special way. It’s a kind of vision that spurs belief.
Again and again and again, we have seen Jesus for who he really is. We are tied to him in new and special ways every day. So as we enter into the grief of his crucifixion, we can hold fast to hope for the miracle of his resurrection.
