Dave Hop The soldier looks on and sees what no one else has seen, what no religious expert or faithful follower has yet understood. He stands there as an outsider, reviled, repugnant, representing all that is dark and unholy. And yet here he is, the scales falling from his eyes. Isaiah would have nodded, for he too saw it coming, long before the sound of hammering echoed across that Friday land. Long before this unrecognisable coronation. The despised king lifted up in all his glory, yet seeming to be nothing but a failure, completely helpless, despairing, weak, broken and lost. No sign of victory or triumph in those gentle hands bloodied by suffering. But this soldier looks on, this pagan, this man of the invading, corrupt empire, and he sees. This vulnerable victim is the Son of God. The Messiah. The one who is setting people free. Not riding in on a powerful charger, with a sword and armour gleaming in the sun. But in his terrible brokenness under a brooding sky. This is not over. It does not end here. And in this moment there is something so powerful about the weakness of the living God.
Mark 15 v 37-39, 1 Corinthians 1 v 25, 2 Corinthians 13 v 4, Isaiah 53
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‘This good news is the shocking, provocative, revolutionary, subversive, counterintuitive good news that in your moments of greatest despair, failure, sin, weakness, losing, failing, frustration, inability, helplessness, wandering, and falling short, God meets you there — right there — right exactly there — in that place, and announces, I am on your side.’
Above quote from What We Talk About When We Talk About God by Rob Bell
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