James T. Cleland - "The Centurion at the Cross" (October 15, 1967)

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-	And forgive us our trespasses	0:04
	as we forgive those who trespass against us,	0:06
	and lead us not into temptation,	0:10
	but deliver us from evil.	0:13
	For thine is the kingdom	0:15
	and the power and the glory forever.	0:17
-	Grace to you and peace from God our Father	0:42
	and the Lord Jesus Christ.	0:46
	Amen.	0:49
	Back in the summer of 1960,	0:54
	while on a mission with army chaplains in Europe,	0:58
	I visited the battlefield of Verdun,	1:03
	that bloody scene of endless carnage in World War I.	1:07
	An American Major acted as guide,	1:15
	and a good one, too.	1:19
	In the late afternoon, on the way back to our quarters,	1:22
	I casually asked this officer	1:26
	what he considered his most interesting experience	1:28
	in the armed forces.	1:33
	His answer was immediate, unhesitating,	1:36
	and unforgettable.	1:41
	He said just four words.	1:44
	"I saw Goring die.	1:48
	I saw Goring die."	1:53
	As a young Second Lieutenant,	1:57
	he had been in charge of escorting the prisoners	1:59
	from their cells to the gallows.	2:02
	20 minutes before zero hour,	2:06
	Herman Goring had outwitted his executioners	2:09
	by committing suicide.	2:13
	Now, the memory of that incident	2:17
	is what triggered this sermon,	2:20
	because by association of ideas,	2:24
	I was reminded of another officer	2:27
	who saw a condemned prisoner die.	2:30
	We cannot talk with him,	2:35
	for his army service occurred over 1,900 years ago,	2:38
	but let us in imagination ask him the same question	2:42
	which was asked of the American Major at Verdun.	2:46
	What is the most interesting thing	2:51
	that it has happened to you in the army?	2:53
	Now, he might answer, notice it, he might answer,	2:58
	"I saw a Jew called Jesus of Nazareth die.	3:03
	I was the centurion in command of that crucifixion."	3:09
	Now, let's look further at this Roman officer	3:16
	on duty in Palestine in an army of occupation around 30 AD.	3:18
	Jesus the prophet of Nazareth was put to death	3:26
	during the governorship of Pontius Pilate,	3:29
	for high treason.	3:34
	So far as the Romans were concerned,	3:36
	probably for blasphemy	3:39
	in the eyes of the ruling Jewish ecclesiastics.	3:42
	The military detail selected	3:46
	to crucify three criminals that day	3:48
	was in charge of a centurion.	3:51
	He was what might be described as a non-commissioned officer	3:55
	with the power and responsibility of a captain.	3:59
	The centurions were the actual working officers,	4:04
	the best informed men in the service.	4:08
	The inculcation of Roman discipline and Roman spirit	4:12
	was in their hands.	4:17
	They held the army together.	4:19
	They were experienced, well paid, and in for 20 years.	4:21
	These men were professionals.	4:28
	Now, the fact which would interest us	4:31
	in a service of worship	4:32
	is what this top sergeant major said	4:34
	when Jesus died on the cross.	4:38
	"Truly, this man was a Son of God."	4:42
	Now, don't make too much of this affirmation.	4:49
	He didn't say,	4:54
	"This man is the second person of the blessed Trinity,"	4:55
	but don't make too little of it.	5:01
	He didn't say, even in Latin, "What a guy."	5:05
	He used a phrase which was not uncommon in his day.	5:10
	"This dead convict was a son of God."	5:15
	Now, that means that the least,	5:21
	one cannot explain this crucified offender	5:23
	in everyday terms,	5:27
	in the kind of language used about ordinary folk.	5:29
	To the centurion, Jesus was unusual, unusually unusual.	5:34
	Now, why?	5:41
	What impressed him about Jesus?	5:42
	He didn't say.	5:45
	Neither did the Gospel writer.	5:47
	Was it Jesus' thoughtfulness for others,	5:50
	for one of the two criminals alongside him,	5:54
	for his mother standing there, watching him die?	5:58
	Was it his religious sensitivity, such a blending of doubt,	6:04
	"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"	6:08
	And of confidence,	6:14
	"Into thy hands, Father, I commit my spirit."	6:16
	Was it the great cry with which he died?	6:21
	Not a cry of despair, but the shout of a victor.	6:25
	We don't know,	6:30
	but that centurion made a comment about his dead prisoner,	6:32
	which suggests that he knew	6:38
	he was in the presence of more than human greatness.	6:40
	Now, the centurion disappears from the pages of scripture	6:46
	a few verses later,	6:49
	after officially reporting to Pontius Pilate	6:51
	that Jesus was dead.	6:55
	And so we lose sight of the officer who saw Jesus die.	6:57
	But the church has sweated blood down the centuries	7:03
	trying to understand, to explain, to interpret his comment,	7:09
	"Truly this man was a Son of God."	7:16
	There have been all kinds of explanations given	7:21
	to clarify the affirmation	7:25
	that Jesus stands in a unique relationship to God.	7:27
	The early explanation was that God adopted Jesus,	7:33
	adopted Jesus as his Son,	7:39
	when he saw the kind of person Jesus was	7:42
	at the baptism, at the crucifixion,	7:45
	or sometime in between these events.	7:49
	Paul called Jesus Lord.	7:53
	That is, one who reveals the unknown God.	7:57
	Lord is one of the names	8:02
	which the Roman soldiers gave Mithras,	8:04
	the sun god,	8:08
	the god of the military cult	8:10
	whose shrines can be found from Arabia to Scotland.	8:14
	The lord Mithras, as we'd say the Lord Jesus.	8:20
	Others said Jesus was born of a woman and God,	8:27
	something akin to the hero concept,	8:30
	a hero like Aeneas of Troy and Rome,	8:33
	and Hercules, and of course, Augustus Caesar.	8:37
	A hero was one who could be explained only in terms	8:42
	of one human parent and one divine parent.	8:49
	Now, time fails me, you'll be glad to know,	8:56
	to trace all the various ways of relating Jesus to God,	8:58
	until we end up with the exalted Credo affirmation,	9:03
	very God of very God.	9:07
	Now, what we should recognize is	9:11
	that these are various ways of saying the same basic thing,	9:13
	that there is a unique relationship between Jesus and God,	9:19
	that the hidden deity was made known in the man of Galilee.	9:24
	As someone has said, God is an empty picture frame.	9:31
	Everything depends on the picture we put in,	9:36
	and Christianity has affirmed that Jesus is the picture.	9:41
	For Western civilization has been haunted	9:47
	and daunted for 19 centuries	9:50
	by the desire to believe that the mysterious Word of God	9:54
	somehow became flesh in that Jewish prophet	10:00
	who was done to death on a hill outside Jerusalem.	10:04
	So what?	10:14
	How do we in this campus, not just we in the chapel,	10:18
	but the we which includes	10:24
	those other members of the community	10:25
	who go with us everywhere else, except chapel,	10:28
	how do we react when we are confronted	10:32
	with the centurion's statement?	10:36
	Some say with vehemence or with lethargy,	10:39
	"We've had enough of Jesus."	10:42
	Sunday school, the family pew,	10:46
	compulsory chapel at prep school.	10:51
	Just let us forget him.	10:55
	He isn't all that important.	10:58
	Why should we be so religiously centered on a dead Jew?	11:01
	Dead 1,900 years.	11:06
	Forget it.	11:08
	Anatole France, the French novelist,	11:11
	would agree with such a reaction.	11:14
	He wrote a short story called "The Procurator of Judea,"	11:18
	telling of a friend visiting Pontius Pilate	11:22
	in his enforced retirement	11:27
	after Pilate was displaced as governor of Judea.	11:30
	And here are the last few sentences of the tale.	11:34
	The friend is speaking.	11:39
	"With what languorous grace they dance, those Syrian women.	11:42
	I knew a Jewess at Jerusalem	11:49
	who used to dance in a pokey little room,	11:52
	on a threadbare carpet,	11:55
	by the light of one smoky little lamp,	11:58
	waving her arms as she clanged her cymbals,	12:02
	her loins arched, her head thrown back,	12:06
	and as it were,	12:09
	dragged down by the weight of her heavy red hair,	12:10
	her eyes swimming with voluptuousness,	12:13
	eager, languishing, compliant.	12:16
	She would have made Cleopatra herself grow pale with envy.	12:20
	One day, however, she disappeared, and I saw her no more.	12:26
	Long did I seek her in disreputable alleys and taverns.	12:31
	Some months after I lost sight of her,	12:37
	I learned by chance that she had attached herself	12:39
	to a small company of men and women	12:41
	who were followers of a young Galilean thaumaturgist.	12:44
	His name was Jesus.	12:50
	He came from Nazareth.	12:53
	He was crucified for some crime.	12:56
	I don't quite know what.	12:59
	Pontius, do you remember anything about the man?"	13:01
	Pontius Pilate contracted his brows,	13:09
	and his hand rose to his forehead	13:12
	in the attitude of one who probes the deeps of memory.	13:14
	Then after a silence of some seconds, "Jesus?" he murmured.	13:18
	"Jesus of Nazareth?	13:25
	I cannot call him to mind."	13:30
	Now, he speaks for some of our academic community.	13:36
	Others of us reject Jesus as the revelation of God,	13:42
	but we do it with thoughtfulness, even with honor.	13:45
	He just doesn't fit into our kind of a world	13:51
	with its tensions and strife,	13:55
	and his emphasis on love of our fellows,	13:58
	even of our enemies.	14:02
	His Gospel doesn't make sense, even though we wish it did.	14:03
	Do you remember George Bernard Shaw's character, Ferrovius,	14:10
	that giant of a man,	14:15
	in the play "Androcles and the Lion."	14:18
	I must ask Bill Griffith to bring back the movie version	14:23
	to the Quadrangle Theater.	14:27
	Great play.	14:29
	Ferrovius wanted to be a Christian,	14:31
	he tried to be a Christian,	14:34
	but when he was thrust into the arena	14:37
	with a sword in his hand,	14:41
	to face six gladiators,	14:44
	he killed them all.	14:48
	And listen to his agonizing explanation of his conduct.	14:50
	"In my youth, I worshiped Mars, the god of war.	14:55
	I turned from him to serve the Christian God.	15:01
	But today, the Christian God forsook me,	15:05
	and Mars overcame me and took back his own.	15:09
	The Christian God is not yet.	15:15
	He will come when Mars and I are dust,	15:20
	but meanwhile, I must serve the gods that are,	15:26
	not the gods that will be.	15:30
	Until then, I accept service	15:33
	in the Praetorian Guard, Caesar."	15:38
	The Christian God is not yet.	15:44
	He will come when Mars and I are dust.	15:48
	Until then, I accept service in the Praetorian Guard.	15:52
	There is an integrity to a statement like that,	15:57
	which calls for respect as well as sorrow,	16:01
	and Ferrovius speaks for not a few of our fellows.	16:07
	And yet others of us will struggle with this schizoid fact	16:12
	that we are citizens of two kingdoms,	16:17
	the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God,	16:20
	and the two realms are not always in agreement.	16:25
	As a result, we live in a day-in, day-out tension,	16:30
	honoring yet unable to honor the valid claims of both.	16:35
	It's not a situation which makes for happiness,	16:43
	far less blessedness.	16:47
	But there is one thing we can resolve to do.	16:50
	Even in this world, we shall seek to know this Jesus	16:55
	and seek to understand what lay behind	17:02
	and below and throughout the centurion's statement,	17:06
	that this man was a Son of God.	17:13
	So help us, God,	17:18
	because if we believe that God became man in Jesus,	17:20
	we should learn what kind of man he became,	17:26
	and what legitimate claim he has on us.	17:33
	If we are not sure that God became man,	17:37
	we should still learn what kind of a man	17:43
	Jesus of Nazareth was,	17:47
	so that people, including this centurion,	17:50
	linked him with God, and linked God with him.	17:54
	Because listen to Bernard Shaw again,	18:00
	of all people, Bernard Shaw,	18:04
	in the preface to "Androcles and the Lion,"	18:07
	which in typical Shavian fashion	18:11
	is twice as long as the play.	18:13
	It's on the first page of the preface.	18:16
	I'll read it twice	18:20
	because you won't believe that Shaw ever said this.	18:21
	"We have always had a curious feeling,	18:25
	that though we crucified Christ on a stick,	18:30
	he somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it,	18:36
	and that if we were better men,	18:42
	we might try his plan."	18:45
	On the first page of the preface	18:49
	to "Androcles and the Lion."	18:51
	"We've always had a curious feeling	18:52
	that though we crucified Christ on a stick,	18:55
	he somehow managed to get hold of the right end of it,	18:58
	and that if we were better men, we might try his plan."	19:02
	If we were better men.	19:07
	One wonders if the centurion tried his plan,	19:12
	believing him to be a Son of God.	19:19
	Amen.	19:26
	Let us pray.	19:28
	O mighty God, who hast not left thyself without a witness,	19:34
	in this chapel set apart for thy glory,	19:40
	in this hour set apart for thy worship,	19:44
	help us so to understand Jesus	19:48
	and his relationship to thee,	19:52
	and what he should mean to us,	19:56
	that we may be his intelligent followers and disciples	19:59
	to thy glory and for our own good health.	20:05
	Amen.	20:12
	(gentle music)	20:27

Item Info

Title:

James T. Cleland - "The Centurion at the Cross" (October 15, 1967)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4fn14t4c

Date:

October 15, 1967

Speaker:

Cleland, James T. (James Tough), 1903-1974

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0403
ref6009_xgy
uachapelsermaud
duke:628279
dcrau002395
ark:/87924/r4fn14t4c
dbb86ef6-9f57-4248-8b2d-7796879271ab

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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In Copyright

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James T. Cleland - "The Centurion at the Cross" (October 15, 1967)

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1. James T. Cleland - "The Centurion at the Cross" (October 15, 1967)

Duke University Archives

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James T. Cleland - "The Centurion at the Cross" (October 15, 1967)

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Duke University Archives

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