And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God!" -Mark 15:39
"Crucify him!" Today in Agape, we repeated these words aloud: Our voices reminded us of the ancient crowd, one voice rising to the Roman authorities: "Crucify him!" As we joined that voice, we found ourselves implicated in the plot. We participated in the sentencing of an innocent man. Where was the justice? Where was his power? The soldiers mocked him, and they flogged him. They put his cross on another, Simon from Cyrene, and they nailed Jesus to that tree. The centurion watched him hang there. And after Jesus breathed his last, only then, did the centurion realize a great mystery: even though the centurion has committed such a heinous act, even though he and we were sinners, Jesus had already offered forgiveness. He had already forgiven during the flogging, the mocking, the dying. The solider finally spoke the truth; Jesus patiently waits for us to do the same.
