It was Palm Sunday a few days ago and I had the rodents* at the 1100 Mass. The Gospel reading was Matthew 27:11-54. It's an absolute beast of reading, being the full Passion. I used AI to summarize it so I didn't accidentally anesthetize the rodents.
In the reading is this passage.
The centurion and the men with him who were keeping watch over Jesus feared greatly when they saw the earthquake and all that was happening, and they said, "Truly, this was the Son of God!"
Why was it that the Centurion and his boys were the ones who understood what was happening?
First off, you have to recognize who they were. The Centurion was equivalent to a Master Sergeant. He'd come up through the ranks, seen a lot of combat, plenty of executions including crucifixions and, if he was like the E-7s and above I've known, he was eminently practical, grounded and hard-boiled.
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| The Centurion. He smoked Marlboro Reds, of course. |
When he was on guard duty in a quiet area, he and the boys would stand around, shooting the breeze. They'd talk politics, conspiracy theories, gossip, sex, the military life and swap campaign stories. They'd all have known a lot about Jesus. He was a big deal. You know that because when he entered Jerusalem, the people waved palm branches at him in his honor.
The Roman soldiers would have known about the rumors of miracles and the way the Jews had hoped He'd be a military leader and lead an uprising against the Romans. When He preached peace and love, the Roman soldiers must have been very grateful. The last thing they wanted was this relatively quiet backwater to go hot.
Then there was their local flag officer, Pontius Pilate. If they hadn't seen it themselves, they'd certainly have heard how he got shoved around by the Jews over this Jesus guy. Pilate hadn't seen any need to crucify Him, but the Jews shoved it down his throat. That's not a small deal. You never want to see your flag officer get kicked in the nards like that.
Finally, there was Jesus' reaction to the whole thing. The Romans had seen plenty of execution and torture sessions and every other time, the victim would be crying or begging or protesting his innocence. Here was a totally innocent man quietly taking his unearned punishment.
Yep, Jesus was special the Centurion and his boys could all see it. They saw it because they had no dog in the fight. They'd been raised with polytheism which they didn't really believe. They'd grown up in a cynical, selfish world. Jesus was different from all that. Certainly what he preached was radically different.
When Jesus finally kissed the big strawberry and the sky got dark and the Earth shook, you better believe the Centurion knew what had just happened.
He may have been the only one who really understood it. Well, he and his boys.
Utterly grounded, with nothing invested in it one way or another, they could see the Truth when it was blasted at them at full volume. Everyone else would have reasons or excuses or explanations or ways of minimizing what had just happened. The Centurion was trained to see what was, what really was.
It's my firm belief that the author of Matthew's Gospel did a bit of editing in that passage. I would bet it was something more along the lines of, "Are you (effing) kidding me? This guy is clearly the Son of God. How could these (effing) morons be so stupid as to kill the Son of God?"
Next time I'm having any kind of doubts about my faith, I will imagine explaining them to the Centurion. He'd box my ears and yell at me like a drill sergeant about being the dumbest animal that had ever crawled the Earth if I couldn't see the Truth.
* - The rodents means the Children's Liturgy. These particular rodents are aged 3-9. Like the Pied Piper, I take them away from their parents for the readings and the sermon for rodent-appropriate teaching and general mayhem in a back room. It's loads of fun.
