The Enthronement of the King (Mark 15.21-41)

When I was a teenager, my father was fired from his job. He was a youth pastor at a big church in Tennessee, and he was an excellent youth pastor. I wasn’t a Christian at the time; I didn’t much care for church; but I loved my dad.

We came to this particular church when I was thirteen. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it wasn’t a very healthy church, and my dad didn’t really fit in with the other pastors. He was quite youthful, and he had a peculiar attachment to the Bible, whereas much of the life of this church was based on the “experience” of spiritual things (I don’t mean experience in the Christian life, in the sense of maturity, but rather the experience one might have during a service). I later learned that over the years, the board of the church often complained about my dad, saying that he was too focused on simply preaching the Bible, and not focused enough on giving us kids the “experience” that they thought we needed.

After six years, they’d finally had enough; several board members lobbied hard against him, and they let him go.

I remember the night that Dad told us he had lost his job. At the time he didn’t know what would happen next; we didn’t know if we would have to move (we did—we moved to Florida soon after). He put on a brave face for us, even though he felt devastated and betrayed. I couldn’t sleep that night; I went to the kitchen for a drink of water. And I saw my dad sitting out on the back porch in the dark, by himself, just sobbing.

That memory caused a lot of bitterness in me over the years—bitterness toward the church—but strangely, it’s a good memory for me, because I have never been prouder of my dad than I was right then. I didn’t have the words to tell him why until much later. I was proud of my dad because even though he thought that he had failed us—the kids in the youth group and his family—he hadn’t. This wasn’t a failure. Dad had resisted years of pressure to do something he wasn’t comfortable with in his conscience, and even if he paid the price for it, it was the right price to pay.

When everyone else saw his firing as a defeat, I saw it as a victory. Because my dad didn’t give in to pressure; he did what God had called him to do, which was simply to preach the Word.

It’s the first clear picture I ever had of victory through defeat, and it’s what I always think of when I think of the story of Jesus on the cross, because the story of Jesus’s crucifixion is the ultimate story of victory through what seemed like defeat.

Last week we saw that Jesus was “crowned” through humiliation — he was falsely accused and tried and tortured and condemned to death…but his suffering was his coronation. In today’s text, Mark pushes further: Jesus actively takes his throne through death—and in so doing, he shows that he is not only the true King taking his throne; he is the Son of God achieving decisive victory for the salvation of his people.

Mark organizes his text in a very clear way; he gives us three “markers”, three blocks of time, to orient us—9:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m., and 3:00 p.m. So I’m simply going to follow his organization.

9:00 a.m.: The King Enthroned (v. 21-32)

V. 21 starts us off just a little before 9:00 a.m. on Friday morning, actually. Jesus has been tried, he has been condemned, and he has been brutally tortured. At this point he will have lost so much blood that he can barely stand. His clothes are digging into every laceration. And he is now carrying his cross to the place of execution, outside the city, a hill called Golgotha. V. 21:

21 And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. 22 And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). 23 And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. 25 And it was the third hour [9:00 a.m.] when they crucified him.

We can’t get into every detail that happens here, but there is one in particular that we need to see. There are allusions to the psalms—particularly Psalm 22—all over this passage. We see, for example, in v. 23, that they offer him wine mixed with myrrh (which he refuses, because he said at the Last Supper that he wouldn’t have wine again until he drank it anew in his kingdom, cf. Mark 14.25). In Psalm 69.21, we read in this cry of lament from David:

They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.

In v. 24, we see the soldiers strip Jesus naked and cast lots for his clothes—a game in the midst of brutality. This is an echo of Psalm 22.17-18, which reads:

17  I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; 18  they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

You see, Mark isn’t just recording events that happened; he’s interpreting them through the lens of the Scriptures. Mark wants the reader to recognize that this man on the cross is the righteous King promised in Scripture — the one who suffers on behalf of his people.

They finally arrive at Golgotha, and at 9:00, they crucify Jesus. They nail his hands and feet to the cross and prop him upright, where he will slowly suffocate because of the pressure put on his lungs. As we saw last week, Mark doesn’t go into graphic detail about this, because he doesn’t need to—his readers were well aware of what crucifixion entailed.

V. 26:

26 And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” 27 And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. 29 And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31 So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.

Jesus is hung between two common criminals, and those passing by sling mockery and insults at him. This too is an echo of Psalm 22. We read in Psalm 22.7-8:

7  All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; 8  “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

So it’s the same thing we saw last week—everything here, as tragic as it is, is dripping with irony. They mock him—“Save yourself, come down from the cross!” They think the cross is a sign of his defeat; they think the sign nailed to the cross, that declares Jesus “King of the Jews”, is a joke; they think the cross disqualifies him as King. But while the sign may be intended as a joke, it’s not a joke; he is the King, and the cross is the means by which he takes his throne.

When they taunt him to save himself, they’re taunting him to do what he could do, and we all understand the temptation.

And we know it. Think about every instinct in us that runs counter to what Jesus does here. When a marriage is hard, the instinct to run emotionally or physically. When your kids push your last nerve, the instinct to explode because it feels like the only way to keep control. When being faithful to Christ costs you status, friends, or opportunities, the instinct to “come down from the cross” and preserve your image. When following Jesus means waiting, or apologizing, or losing the argument, or confessing sin — the instinct is always, “There must be an easier way.”

The crowd says, ‘Save yourself.’ And every one of us knows that voice. The cross confronts the lie that the path of least resistance is always the best path.

Jesus’s refusal to save himself is the way he saves us—which was his intention the whole time. His apparent powerlessness is in fact a manifestation of his very real power.

At 9:00, the King takes his throne—lifted up for all to see, ruling by giving his life.

12:00 p.m.: The Divine Lament (v. 33)

I hope you see that I’m not trying to paint this story as rosier than it actually was, as if it was only victory. This was Christ’s enthronement, but it wasn’t a joyous enthronement. It was an enthronement borne in sorrow and anguish. That, in part, is what makes the gospel so resonant: it’s not news that’s “too good to be true”. It’s believably good, because it was earned in blood and tears and pain we can’t even imagine.

And the pain in question—Jesus’s pain—wasn’t merely physical. On the cross, Jesus took on himself the sin of all of his people: past, present and future. At this point in the story, he has been on the cross for three hours. So for three hours, he has been enduring not only the most intense physical agony, but the wrath of God poured out against our sin. It wasn’t man punishing Jesus, but God—as Isaiah said in Isaiah 53, when he called the Savior “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted”, saying that “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” that “it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53.4, 6, 10).

And in v. 33, we see a very stark and clear picture of that—as if a window on heaven were opened, and humanity was able to see how God felt about this event. V. 33:

33 And when the sixth hour [that is, 12:00 noon] had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour [that is, 3:00 p.m.].

This was not a solar eclipse, as some have suggested, because Passover took place during a full moon, and a solar eclipse is only possible during a new moon. This was not an astronomical coincidence; it was a supernatural event.

And once again, this echoes the Old Testament. Darkness in the Old Testament was a common picture of lament. In Amos 8.9-10, God says through the prophet:

9  “And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10  I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.

The darkness covering the land while Jesus hung on the cross was a divine expression of lament.

And of course, we also know that in the Old Testament, darkness is a sign of judgment. Remember what happened in the book of Exodus, when God was judging the Pharaoh in Egypt for not letting the Hebrews out of slavery—he covered the entire country with darkness.

This moment brings both of these themes together. Because Christ’s enthronement came through such horrendous sin and suffering, heaven laments; but at the same time, God is exercising his righteous judgment against the sin of his people. Darkness falls over all of Israel in the middle of the day, which is a terrifying thing—anyone who’s been in a power outage, and suddenly plunged into unexpected darkness, knows how frightening it is.

That fear is appropriate when we’re thinking of the judgment of God. But this is what so many of us have a hard time understanding. We always say that one day God will judge the sin of the world. And as far as the whole world is concerned, that’s true.

But if we belong to him, if we have placed our faith in Christ, we will not be condemned for our sin on that day, because that’s what happened to Jesus as he hung from the cross. As he suffered, as he suffocated, as darkness covered the land, the condemnation that we deserve was falling on him.

So you see the paradox here.

Most of us assume that if God is present, we will feel light. Mark tells you the exact opposite. In the darkness, God was doing his greatest work.

And this is absolutely vital for us to remember. If the Son of God entered darkness to bring you into light, then yourdarkness doesn’t mean you’re abandoned. You may be in a moment where you think God is absent — but Scripture insists that God is often most active when he feels most silent.

The world sees darkness and assumes God is absent. Mark shows the opposite: in the dark, God is intensely present, expressing grief over sin and exercising judgment against sin at the same time. In the darkness, Christ is on the throne.

3:00 p.m.: The Victory of the Son of God (v. 34-41)

Finally, after three hours of darkness, the light returns. It is at this point we see Jesus at his weakest; but it is also at this point that we have the clearest revelation of his identity.

V. 34:

34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Why does Jesus ask this question? After all, he knew why this was happening to him; he’s been telling his disciples for a long time what he was coming to Jerusalem to do—he was coming there to die.

There are two levels behind what he says; the first is purely human. Jesus is crying out exactly what he feels. Although he knows that God hasn’t forsaken him, hasn’t abandoned him—he knows the resurrection is coming—in that moment, it feels as if that’s the case. It feels as if he’s been abandoned and forsaken. Much like in the garden, when Jesus truthfully said that his soul was “very sorrowful, even to death” (Mark 14.34), Jesus is being honest about what he is feeling in that moment. If you have ever felt abandoned, unheard, or unseen — Jesus doesn’t shame that. He enters it. He prays your prayer for you.

But there is a much bigger, deeper level to his words. In v. 34, Jesus is directly quoting—once again—Psalm 22.1, which reads:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

Psalm 22, at the time, was seen as the perfect lament of the suffering innocent. King David, the epitome of the righteous king in the eyes of the people of Israel, lamented because he was facing unjust persecution. Here, Jesus shows that his despair, while more intense than we can imagine, is not random; it is the righteous sufferer entering the depth of abandonment for his people.

All of the Jews watching on that hillside would have recognized this psalm. So they should have immediately recognized that Jesus, in his lament, is identifying himself with this righteous sufferer.

But they still don’t quite understand. V. 35:

35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.”

Why didn’t they understand him, and think he was calling for the prophet Elijah? Perhaps it’s because they couldn’t hear Jesus clearly over the noise (the name Jesus called out in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli” sounds similar to the prophet Elijah’s name), or perhaps because they didn’t want to see the link he’s making with Psalm 22.

At any rate, the mocking continues—they give him sour wine to drink (presumably, he didn’t take it, as we saw before), and they taunt him: “Let’s see if Elijah comes.”

And it is on this note that the two most extraordinary moments of this event take place. V. 37:

37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

This—the curtain of the temple being torn in two—is the first. It’s not a random detail; this is theology in action. The curtain in the temple was enormous—very tall and incredibly thick. This curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place, where God’s presence was meant to dwell, where men were not allowed to enter, and where the High Priest could only enter once a year.

Now, it rips open, exposing the Most Holy Place to the world.

This is a double sign. It is a sign of judgment on the temple system that rejected Jesus. (Remember the fig tree? This is a much clearer sign of the same thing.) And it is a sign that access to God has now been opened to sinners—the King grants entrance into the presence of God through his death.

Now, the Most Holy Place is open to the world—which means, the temple is everywhere. The place where God’s presence dwells is wherever his people are, because they are the ones he has saved.

We have such a hard time realizing the full weight of this truth. So many Christians live as if the veil is still hanging — as if they need to earn the right to come near God. “I’ll pray more once I get my life cleaned up.” “I can’t come to God when I’ve failed again.” “I don’t want to bring this same sin to God for the hundredth time.” “God must be tired of me.”

The torn curtain should banish all such statements from our minds. The torn curtain is not an invitation for the holy to come close — it’s an invitation for the guilty, the weary, the ashamed, and the inconsistent.

This is the King’s victory—he doesn’t come down off the cross, and he doesn’t call for Elijah to save him. He dies for his people, in order to give us God. This is reconciliation, not self-rescue; it is access, not escape.

And finally, we come to v. 39:

39 And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

The centurion was the Roman soldier who was on the hillside, guarding the site of the crucifixion. This seems like a small thing—a private moment from a single individual. But v. 39 is the climax of Mark’s gospel.

A Gentile, a Roman soldier, a man trained to admire brute power, suddenly recognizes Jesus’s true identity—not a teacher, not a leader, not a healer, but the Son of God. And what is most incredible is that the centurion finally sees Jesus for who he is, not because Jesus won a battle, called down angels, or climbed down from the cross—but because he died.

Once again, what we see here is the gospel in miniature. It is not salvation for the Jews only, but for all peoples. The nations come to faith not through displays of force but through the suffering of the Son of God.

So take courage—bring in the person praying for a loved one who seems impossible to reach. Bring in the cynic, the secular colleague, the teenager who mocks everything, the spouse who seems disinterested. The first human to confess Jesus as the Son of God in Mark’s Gospel is a pagan executioner. If God opened his eyes, no one in your life or in this room is beyond hope.

Now, Mark includes one final mention that is important—not mainly because it is important for this story, but for what comes next, which we’ll see next week. V. 40:

40 There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. 41 When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.

We’ll talk more about these women next Sunday, but I think Mark mentions them here to show that the centurion wasn’t the only person who was seeing Jesus rightly here. Jesus’s disciples (the twelve he had chosen to follow him) have almost all fled—but the women who had followed him have stayed. They become the key witnesses linking cross, burial, and resurrection.

This is a revolutionary detail, because women were considered second-class citizens at the time. And yet, it is through these women that the story will continue; they are the ones who will carry the testimony forward first.

They stand as a living picture of what real discipleship looks like: staying near the King even when his glory is hidden.

Mark is hitting on one of the main goals of his gospel: to show Christians what it looks like to follow Christ. And it rarely looks glorious. Mark knows full well how often following Christ will seem dark and desperate and crazy.

All too often, it will seem like there are so many better things we could be doing. Like there is so much greater happiness to be had. That we are being called to give up so much more than we’re getting.

Mark wants us to see that that is not true.

Most believers think their lives “don’t count” because they’re small, ordinary, unimpressive.

They’re the parent who gets up exhausted to love their kid again

They’re the believer who resists temptation again today

They’re the Christian who refuses the shortcut because it would dishonor Christ

They’re the widow who prays faithfully

They’re the depressed believer who shows up to church even when they feel nothing

They’re the overburdened person who chooses forgiveness instead of retaliation

They’re the believer who keeps trusting God in the dark

It will rarely look glorious. But neither did the cross. Mark’s point is simple: if your life looks unimpressive but faithful, you’re probably right where Jesus wants you.

Conclusion: The Cross as Throne, the Death as Victory

The only true way to light is through the dark, because that is the road Jesus took. The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12.2). The way to light is through the dark.

At 9:00, the King is enthroned.

At 12:00, heaven laments and judges.

At 3:00, the Son of God wins the decisive victory.

Nothing in this text looks like glory. But everything in this text is glory.

The cross is his throne. The darkness is his royal canopy. The cry is his victory shout. The torn veil is his achievement. And the confession of the centurion is the first glimpse of the global kingdom he came to build.

We have no reason to despair, and we definitely have no reason to look elsewhere for our purpose or our happiness or our fulfillment. We have everything in him, because he died for us.