The Bible Binge: The Shock of the Ironic (Mark 15:33-41)

The Ironic Pool

The Rangers won the World Series this week. Anyone celebrate a team from Texas winning the World Series? One funny story from all this… Chase Field in Phoenix is home to an iconic pool behind the right-center wall. After the fans had cleared out the other night, Rangers were prevented by security from celebrating in the pool… which was designed for celebrating. A bit of irony… the very thing made for celebrating, off-limits to the ones doing the celebrating. The Diamondbacks, of course, believe only Arizona should be celebrating in that pool.

We’re talking about irony this week. Last week we began a series entitled “The Bible Binge”. I encourage you to join along. One of the reasons for doing this is to get us all familiar again with our Bibles. 14 months through the Bible and our sermons throughout this series will be tracking right along with the Bible readings. In fact, all this month we are making our way through the book of Mark, and then, beginning the book of Genesis. This series should be a lot of fun.

Mark’s Biography: Action

Last week we began the book of Mark. Mark is one of four biographies of Jesus that we have in our New Testaments. Mark is a book of action. Mark introduces us to this rabbi figure Jesus, and from the very beginning of Mark’s biography, Jesus is on the move and he is involved in all sorts of activity. This Jesus is striking up conversations, he’s healing, he’s leading. And he’s teaching. But most of Jesus’ teaching in Mark’s biography is short and to the point. And Mark wants us to see that this Jesus is Good News. Here’s his opening thesis statement in the very first verse:

Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

This is the Good News of the One who was promised in the Old Testament. The Messiah. The Kingdom of God has come near in this person of Jesus. The kingdom that Israel has been waiting for is now here in the person of Jesus. The kingdom of a king who is coming to provide salvation and the forgiveness of sin has finally come.

Mark’s Biography: Ambiguity, Fear, and Irony

But there’s also this in Mark. Mark is a book of ambiguity, and confusion, and fear. This Good News is Good News to those who hear the message and receive it. But is also very unsettling. There is something dark going on. The action-packed biography is more like a thriller. It’s not boring. But there is a lot of fear. No book of the New Testament highlights fear like the Book of Mark. Fear is everywhere.

Mark is also full of the ironic. This is the book that highlights those who lose their life will find it. And those who find their life will lose it. And Jesus came not for the healthy, but for the sick. We’ll get to this in a moment.

Mark wants us to see that the Messiah who had been predicted is unsettling. He’s come to disrupt our lives. He’s come to challenge what we think is the meaning of life. He’s come to upend our notions of power and glory. Jesus is an enigma in Mark. The disciples can’t figure it out. Jesus isn’t who we expected. He’s not doing what we expected. And as a result, fear rules.

Fear isn’t the only major theme in Mark. Again, the opening thesis verse provides us with what Mark wants us to see in this Person of Jesus:

Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

This Messiah, the Good News of this Jesus, is that he is not only Messiah, but the Son of God. Mark wastes no time in letting us know just what we’re to think of this rabbi doing all of these wonderful things. This is the Son of God. This Messiah is the King of Israel, historically called the Son of God. This is the King we’ve been waiting for. And this is the Son proclaimed by the Father to be His Son. This One about whom this biography is written, the one who is both the Good News and bears the Good News is not of this world… he is divine. And Mark puts that front and center in this biography.

If you begin your biography with this kind of statement that this is the beginning of the Great News of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, we would rightly expect that the author back up such a claim. Mark does do this. But that’s where we have to go back to the tone and the color and the context of this claim: ambiguity, confusion, fear.

Scary Christmas

We’re about to come into my favorite time of year, the Christmas season. I’m already playing Christmas tunes. And as good Christians do, we celebrate Advent and Christmas as that moment in time when God came to be one of us and walk among us. The Incarnation is wonderful. It is comforting. It is what we need. But Mark also is reminding us that this Incarnation idea is also one that is scary. And for many in Mark, they probably are thinking more along the lines of The Nightmare of Christmas. Popular song years ago asked the question, What if God was One of us? If God was One of us, that would be both a wonder and unnerving.

In Mark, it’s the religious people, the people who have their act together, those who are the best behaved, those who are the Christian heroes who fear God walking among them. Religious people and followers alike cannot bring themselves to talk about Jesus as The Son of God. Mark throws this in our face. He introduces Jesus as the Son of God and within minutes of reading this… before Jesus even begins to proclaim that the Kingdom of God has been brought near in his coming, Jesus is baptized and this is what the voice from heaven says:

Mark 1:11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”

We hear that, and we’re probably shocked at this voice, a voice that provoked a lot of fear long ago at Mt Sinai when the Voice gave Moses the law in thunder and lightning… here that voice shakes the earth with the declaration “You are my beloved Son.” A great, thunderous declaration… not exactly provoking warm fuzzies.

Make no mistake, the One who is baptized is the Promised One of the Old Testament and He is My Son… he is divine. He’s been sent on a mission to seek and save the lost. And you would think such a declaration from the booming voice of the ancient times would be enough to get grand applause from the morally upright and the best Christian people in the world, but no… they don’t say much.

Mark continues to write his biography and following the life of Jesus and we expect to hear more about this Jesus being the Son of God and sure enough, finally in chapter 5 we have it, but it isn’t what we want to hear:

Mark 5:2–7 A man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met Jesus. He lived in the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him anymore—not even with a chain—because he often had been bound with shackles and chains, but had torn the chains apart and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and knelt down before him. And he cried out with a loud voice, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

Demons. Demons declare Jesus to be the Son of God. In fact, already, in Mark’s biography, demons have declared Jesus to be the Messiah, the Promised One of the Old Testament. And now, here they are, using the lips of an outcast to declare to anyone who will listen that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus heals the man, but again… the people you’d expect to affirm Jesus as being the One who is who Mark says he is are not saying it. You have the Father in Heaven saying it. You have the Demons saying it.

Where’s Peter’s Confession?

You fully expect Peter. After all, he does have the grand declaration in the book of Matthew that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of the Living God. But Peter doesn’t say it in Mark. When Jesus asks, who do you say I am, Mark records Peter saying, “You’re the Messiah”. Full. Stop. You see, Mark wants us to feel the angst, feel the confusion, feel the fear, feel the question marks… this is the Good News of the Messiah the Son of God, and no one can bring themselves to say it out loud in this biography.

He wants us to feel the weight of a church, a religion, so focused on good behavior, that they miss the Gospel. We miss the gospel. And as if to make his point once and for all, there is one person who is not God, who is not a demon, finally stepping forward to make the claim that Mark’s biography has been making all along and everyone missed it.

The Shockingly Ironic Confession

At the cross. Jesus is crucified. He dies among sinners as a sinner. He’s being mocked. Those around the cross are saying, if he really is the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross. His last words in Mark’s biography are “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” Even the Father who declared Jesus to be the favored Son has abandoned him. Jesus dies. And we finally get the declaration we’ve been waiting for:

Mark 15:39 “When the centurion, who was standing opposite him, saw the way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Truly this man was the Son of God. Finally, a confession to build a church on. A confession to stake our lives on. But Mark wants us to stand there and just stare at what we’re witnessing and hearing. Just stop. The morally upright don’t say it. Jesus’ followers don’t say it. The best Christians in the world can’t say it. The theologians. The pastors. The conference speakers. The podcast hosts… nobody says it. Stop and see: a Roman Centurion. Centurion? Didn't see that coming. A filthy, God-hating, murderous Roman soldier. A sinner. A gentile. Someone who is not like us. Someone we’d never want our kids to grow up to be. That guy.

That’s shocking irony. That the guy you least expect, the guy you’d never want being your spokesperson for an entire religion is saying what no one else but demons are saying: Truly this was the Son of God.

Jesus said it earlier in the biography:

Mark 2:17 “I didn’t come to call the righteous. I came to call the sinners.”

Sinners. You’ know, it’s not an accident that the very next name mentioned after this centurion is Mary Magdalene. Another sinner. At the cross. It's a bit unsettling when someone we know says the unexpected because it doesn't fit what we believe to be true about them. This is the worst of the sinners watching the King of Israel die, and confessing what is now clear to him… we just killed the Son of God. The Father was right. The demons were right. The Son of God. Among us. We missed it. And now I get it. And we really don’t want to hear it coming from that guy. My life is better than that guy. I’ve never done those things. In fact I’m a pastor. I give my life for the church. And that sinner is saying what I find myself unable to say too often because I want to control my own life. The gospel spoken by terrible sinners is so unnerving to people who think they have their act together. How dare he, the one who isn’t like me, say what I should be saying but don’t. How dare he be the one to step up to the mic when we’re too busy with our own self-importance.

Saint Centurion

On this, All Saints Day, I give you Saint Centurion. The sinner is the saint. That’s what Mark wants us to see. That shocking irony of a despicable centurion saying what needs to be said is for us, and in doing so, speaking the stuff of saints. Of legends. The gospel shows up in unexpected places because it hunts us down. To grace us all over again. This is God’s grace to us. We are that guy. That Roman Soldier speaks for us because we are of his kind. Sinners. Filthy sinners. In need of the Jesus who died, tearing the temple curtain in two… and ushering sinners into the presence of God, himself. The Son of God. The One who came for sinners. The one who gives his life as a ransom. Because he loves us! For us. Mark beckons us to come and stand beside the centurion, and confess with sinners: Truly, this man was the Son of God.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

The Table is for sinners. This is where Jesus provides us with himself. The Son of God, fully God, fully man, is here for us. No need to fear. No need to be confused. This is for you. For me. This is where the sinner finds forgiveness, life, and salvation. This is where all of us centurions show up and once again, feebly and meekly declared that Jesus, the Son of God, is who we desperately need. Again.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26

May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.