Years ago my family and I visited Medieval Times, which is a place where you enjoy a royal banquet dinner and watch a staged tournament of sword fighting and jousting on horses. The dinner was good and the show was entertaining but first was the room. The room I’m talking about is an exhibit filled with all kinds of medieval torture devices like The Judas Cradle, The Rack, and the Bronze Bull. It’s macabre to think that people have come up with such grotesque ways of inflicting pain on other people.
Of course, folks living in the medieval ages were far from the first people to implement barbaric forms of punishment. The Romans crucified people; hanging people on a cross for several days until they died. As we know, crucifixion was how the Romans executed Jesus.
Now unless we’ve seen a film like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ, it’s hard to imagine how horrific crucifixion is. Apart from the flogging and physical assault, the four Gospels say very little about the physical suffering Jesus endured on the day of his crucifixion. The Gospel of Mark simply tells us “they crucified him.”1 Twice, Mark says “they” meaning the Roman soldiers “crucified him”—Jesus the Messiah.
Mark seems more interested in what I think of as the paradox of this crucifixion. Earlier in Mark’s Gospel, the high priest asked Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” For which Jesus said, “I am… And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”2 Yet here in the fifteenth chapter, Jesus the Messiah is crucified.
How can Jesus be the Messiah of God and yet end up crucified? The Messiah comes as the Savior, not as a criminal. Crucifixion is what Rome does to those whose high crimes involve insurrection, who speak in seditious language against Caesar. In a game of thrones, crucifixion is the Roman way of winning and reminding everyone that whoever gets in the way of Rome loses.
So it seems paradoxical as Christians to say that we believe in Jesus, the Crucified Messiah. For Jesus, his crucifixion seems like a paradox. He’s the Messiah who has come to save and yet the crowd watching him hang on the cross responds with taunts and insults. The humiliation Jesus enures is substantial. Betrayed by Judas, disowned by Peter, and seemingly abandoned by the rest of his disciples, here Jesus is—the Crucified Messiah. The feeling of abandonment was so great that Jesus felt completely forgotten by the Father in heaven. So Jesus cried out, “‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’).”3
The point Mark has brought us to is an understanding that because Jesus is the Crucified Messiah, God has chosen the cross as his means of salvation.
Yet, in this moment of paradox, another paradox emerges. Mark tells us that as Jesus took his last breath and died, the centurion soldier on guard saw just how Jesus died and said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”4
The confession of the centurion is somewhat perplexing. Was the soldier’s confession like what we speak of as a confession of Christian faith? It’s hard to imagine that in this particular moment of Jesus’ crucifixion, a Roman guard suddenly has in mind a robust Christology that is taught as a matter of Christian doctrine. Yet, it also seems silly to think that the centurion soldier’s confession is nothing more than a whimsical utterance.
Although perplexing at face value, we should remember that the soldier’s confession is not just what he is saying but what Mark is telling us about Jesus. We might recall that Mark began his Gospel, saying “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.”5 With story after story of Jesus healing diseases, driving out demons, and preaching, Mark reminds us that why Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Now, in the crucifixion of Jesus the Messiah, Mark is calling our attention to the death of Jesus and saying this is the Son of God. Mark is asking us to turn our eyes and ears to the crucified Jesus so that we may see and hear that this Crucified Messiah is the Son of God.
The point Mark has brought us to is an understanding that because Jesus is the Crucified Messiah, God has chosen the cross as his means of salvation. This is the other paradox that emerges. Nobody ever expected a Roman crucifixion to be a part of God’s redemptive plan but it is. There is no other way of salvation, for this is how God inaugurates his kingdom—in and through the Crucified Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God.
The implications of this second paradox matter much. I believe that Mark wrote his Gospel so that we, as believers reading his Gospel, will learn to live as faithful followers of Jesus Christ. In fact, Jesus himself, according to Mark, not only calls us to follow him but also demands that we deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow him.6 There isn’t any way of following Jesus apart from embracing the cross as God’s wisdom and power, his chosen instrument of redemption.
Because the crucifixion is God’s chosen instrument of redemption, we must reject all other means by which we might pursue God’s redemption. Our witness to the good news of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God must embody “godly power, at work through presence and power of Jesus by the Spirit among a group of people.”7 Discipleship then is not about trying to make sure others vote for political candidates who promise to enact policies that appear more favorable to Christianity. Rather, following Jesus means getting in the trenches with people where we listen and serve, trusting that God is already at work in the trenches for his redemptive good. As we listen and serve, God opens space for us to discern together what needs to change so that we can learn to follow Jesus and pursue the kingdom of God together.
Some might say that this is too idealistic, that we need to open our eyes to the real world around us. But such worldly wisdom forgets that Jesus was crucified in the real world around us as well as raised from death in the real world around us,8 which changes everything. Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day upon which Jesus the Messiah was crucified. Calling the day Good Friday seems paradoxical too but we call it that because it really is in and through the Crucified Messiah that God is saving the world. May we never forget this paradox that is indeed good news!
All scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Mark 14:61-62.
John R Stott, The Cross of Christ, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1986, 80-81, lists four proposed explanations for the cry as one of 1) anger, unbelief, and despair, 2) loneliness, 3) victory, and 4) dereliction but regards also reads the cry of Jesus as one of dereliction.
Mark 15:39.
Mark 1:1.
Mark 1:17; 8:34.
David E. Fitch, Reckoning With Power: Why The Church Fails When It’s On The Wrong Side of Power, Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2024, 46, this “godly power” is in contrast to what the labels as “worldly power” which is a coercive and/or manipulative power over people.
We can never understand the true meaning of the crucifixion apart from the resurrection. See Morna D. Hooker, “Believe and Follow: The Challenge of Mark’s Ending, “ in Preaching Mark’s Unsettling Messiah, eds. David Fleer and Dave Bland, St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2006, 48, “The development of Christian doctrine has tended to ling Christ’s death, in particular, with the forgiveness of sin; but we misinterpret the significance of Jesus’ death if we detach it from resurrection. His resurrection marks his vindication and demonstrates his acquittal. Only in the light of the resurrection can we understand the meaning of Jesus’ death.”