The Way of the Cross—Good Friday The Centurian's Confession

I was there. Before the world was created, the earth formed.
I was there. When Adam first breathed in the cool morning mist of Eden.
And I was there when you fell and knew good and evil and began to die.
I was there.

I was there when my Father’s plan to save you was born.
And I laid down my glory, I laid down my life, for you.
I was there for you.
I have known you before you were born and I was there when you were.
I was there when you walked your first step and blew out your first candle.

   When you laughed in the sun in your backyard.
   When you felt the wind in your face sledding down those hills.
   When you cried when you thought you were all alone...all of those times.

I never left you.
I never will.
Nothing, nothing can separate you from me.

I don’t know why I went there.
I’ve done too much. Pretty bad stuff.
It was too much to forgive.
But when I heard that Jesus would be there, at Simon’s house…

He was there at the head of the table. Rich men around him, many of them men I’ve known. I wanted to leave.
I don’t remember how I got in but I went right to him. And I wanted to say something but I couldn’t. I just started crying, like a crybaby. At his feet.

They were talking about me, I knew it, whispering about me, but what did they expect? Just days before He cast evil out of me, a darkness, a heaviness that weighed me like a thousand millstones.

And when he did, when he took that away, after that I was lighter. The sky was bluer, I just stayed in my room alone, on my bed, laughing and crying.

Alone but so warm, so free.
I don’t know why I went.
I could feel their eyes, their looks.
I washed his feet, poured oil…
Then he was talking to Simon, whose house... but he was looking at me.

I was there.
In the kitchen where it seemed I always was when Jesus came over.

I love when he comes over. Lazarus is easier to live with and Mary does her work quicker. They love his stories. I do. But they hang on his every word. Or just sit with him for hours in the courtyard.

They can both do that quite well. Sit with him.

Sit and do nothing. Do you know anyone like that? They enjoy a well-prepared meal that you’ve worked on for hours and then leave you to clear the table and do the dishes. Someone has to do the work. If we all sat around...the place would be a disaster.

So one day I had had enough. After a dinner that would get me accolades in the King’s palace, I am left scraping the burnt chicken skin off the iron shelf. I look out and there is Mary, again sitting at his feet, drinking in his words.

[tossing down the towel in her hands, she walks] I walked over. I interrupted, Master, don’t you care that my sister has abandoned the kitchen to me? Tell her to lend me a hand.

Where was he?

Where was he when my husband stopped looking at me with love? His eyes turning grey when he looked at me.

Where was he when each week I saw him distance himself further and further from me and I was left at home at night alone with the kids?

And where was he when I found out and my husband left me for another woman? Where was he then? Why didn’t he come then? Through that? Through those years?

A loving God who cares about me and loves me but allows all of that to happen? Why wouldn’t he keep my marriage together? What God has brought together, let no man break apart.

Why would he let it fall apart?

So when they brought me to Jesus, I didn’t care
I cared as much about him and what he said as the man they caught me with.

A prophet, a healer, a savior, I didn’t care. I could die.

People had said he was a good speaker, a wise teacher, a prophet, but he said nothing. Just knelt down and wrote in the sand with his finger. Some said “God’s Son”... he had nothing to say to me.

He had looked at me. I saw him. Maybe he saw I didn’t care. They kept at him—

So I walked. (moves forward) Free.

He saved my life. 
Ten words and I don’t have to pay any more for what I’ve done, the lives I’ve ruined, the ways I’ve screwed up.

All those years I asked where.
He was there. Here. [points]

I won’t. Even if I have to die with you, I would never deny you.

We all agreed. We wouldn’t leave him. All the way to the garden, Gethsemane, he was silent but we told him we were with him, to the end.

He walked steps away and prayed, pleading that if there was any way to not go through with it that it might be so. On his face in the dirt, he sweat tears of blood. But when he came back to us, me and James and John. We were sleeping. He woke us and told us to stay awake with him. He prayed again and returned but again we had fallen asleep. He asked us to stay alert with him and pray. So he left again. How could we do that to him? His closest friends in his toughest hour. We were there. He was there. We just couldn’t keep our eyes open. Then he returned the third time. He walked up to us, the three of us…

We were sleeping.

I was there. Coming in from the country, when I saw the crowds on the road I figured half as much that it was another crucifixion parade. The Romans with their horses and flags dragging their prisoners with crosses on their backs, whipped, carrying the beams they’d hang on to die. This time there were a whole lot more people, crazed pack, hundreds of them yelling and throwing things, cursing, flowing out of the city gates like an un-dammed river.

The foot soldiers could barely hold them all back. We could see three crosses in the middle of them and three men dragging their feet to die.

When we cleared the road we saw more than we wanted.
I covered my son’s eyes.

One of them, Jesus, they said, was beaten, whipped beyond recognition. His eyes puffed shut, his face and body bloody and flesh torn. He was falling. How he could even walk, let alone carry that beam... but no one helped him.

Instead they cursed him at the top of their lungs. Their words with such hate rained on him. Die! Die! I wanted to look away but I didn’t. This had nothing to do with me. And he fell again and then the soldiers pulled me in and told me to carry his cross. No, I said, I have my son and our bags.

If you want to see your son again, you’ll do it. Now! And he cracked his whip on my boy. Stop Stop. I will! They threw my boy aside. Go home I yelled. They threw me into him. Pick it up! I helped him up and felt the cuts in his body, his flesh in my fingers. The crown of thorns they’d jammed into his head ran blood like water over his face. How he could even stand I didn’t know. The whip cracked on my back. Move! I went behind him, carrying his cross stepping in the trail of blood he left... until we got there…

Golgotha, the place of the skull.

I didn’t want to be there. None of us did.

[head shaking “no”] It was too much.

We couldn’t believe this was really happening.

There was so much yelling and pushing.

The horses and soldiers. The screams of pain. And then the quiet when they pulled him up. Just hanging by his arms, his hands... How someone could do that to another man…

We followed him for years. No one spoke like him. We dedicated our lives to his teaching. Wherever he went we went and now, now that would stop. Hanging, he struggled to take in each breath. I held mine each time...like I wanted to help him. It didn’t. We sat farther off and could only watch. He called out to God, Father, why have you forsaken me?

It got dark and there was thunder in the middle of the day.

But people still mocked him. Cat-calling. Leave him! Leave him alone! Let him die in peace. But they wouldn’t. Their hate was deep. They wouldn’t accept him, they wouldn’t listen to him. And now they could get back at him. He would pay. He would pay.

For nothing he did.

I will be with you to the end of the age.

Not death nor life,
   angels nor demons,
   the present nor the future.

Nothing
Nothing
Nothing can separate you from the love of our heavenly Father.

I am here for you. I am here to be found.
I’ve picked you. I will never leave you.
There’s no need to fear for I’m your God.
I’ll give you strength. I’ll help you. I’ll hold you steady and keep a firm grip on you.
I have been with you from the beginning of time and I’m not going to leave you.