Amos had spoken of a day when God would make the sun go down at noon (Amos 8:9). At noon the sky goes dark for three hours, 45"while the sun's light failed." Creation seems to withdraw its light to avoid watching. At the same moment, inside the temple, 45"the curtain of the temple was torn in two." That curtain separated the Most Holy Place from everyone but the high priest, who alone passed through it, once a year, carrying the blood of atonement (Leviticus 16). The barrier that kept ordinary people at a careful distance from God's presence is torn open at the moment Jesus dies, as though his death accomplished what the curtain had always guarded. Hebrews calls it a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh (Hebrews 10:19-20).
Luke's Jesus speaks to the Father at both ends of the cross. His first words there began, Father, forgive them (Luke 23:34), and his last begin, Father, into your hands. The whole ordeal is held between two prayers to the Father. Jesus' final words carry no despair. They come from an old psalm of trust, into your hand I commit my spirit (Psalm 31:5), and Jesus adds the word Father. After Gethsemane and hours of mockery and physical suffering, his last recorded act is an act of trust, deliberately handing his spirit to the Father. 46"having said this he breathed his last." Luke's language suggests something willing, a death entered into freely.
Luke says the centurion praised God (verse 47), so the verdict is also worship. The centurion, a Roman soldier with no religious stake, watches it all and reaches his own verdict: 47"Certainly this man was innocent!" The word can also mean righteous, the word Luke used of Zechariah and Elizabeth, righteous before God (Luke 1:6). Pilate declared Jesus innocent three times and handed him over anyway. Now, at the moment of his death, a Roman executioner reaches the same verdict unprompted, because the manner of the death settled the question for him.
The crowd's response is grief and not celebration. They 48"returned home beating their breasts," a gesture of mourning, the same gesture the tax collector made in his prayer (Luke 18:13). Whatever they came expecting to see, what they witnessed sent them home in sorrow. At a distance, close enough to watch and not close enough to be safe, his acquaintances and the women who followed him from Galilee stand watching (verse 49), unable to leave and unable to come closer, faithful in the only way left to them, holding vigil over a death none of them yet understood was not the end of the story.
The centurion and the crowd saw the same death and drew different conclusions, one into praise and the rest into grief. Hand one worry into the Father's hands tonight in the words Jesus used, and let it stay there until morning.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a curtain torn open at the moment your Son breathed his last. Teach us his final trust, into your hands I commit my spirit, whatever darkness we are walking through when our own hour comes. And give us the centurion's honest verdict, willing to say plainly that he was innocent and that his death has changed everything. In Jesus' name, amen.