DAY 6 - Death of the Messiah and the Temple Curtain Torn in Two

 MARK 15:1-47

Today Jesus will appear before Pilate.  He eventually will be handed over to be crucified, mocked by the soldiers, and derided by those who passed by saying, “you who would destroy the temple (ναός, naos) and build it in three days” come down from there.  However, when Jesus gives out a loud sound and breathed out, the Temple (ναός, naos) curtain is torn (σχίζω, schizo) in two.  This leads the Roman Centurion who stood facing him confessing, “truly this man was God’s Son.” In the distance, there were women including Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses, and Salome.  Joseph of Arimathea, who was a member of the council and waiting for the Kingdom of God, provided a linen cloth, wrapped Jesus’ body, and laid it in a tomb hewn out of the rock, then a stone was rolled against the door of the tomb. Remarkably, this pericope ends with two women, Mary Magdalene and Mary of mother of Joses, who endure and saw where the body was laid.

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What is the significance of the Temple veil being torn in two?  Raymond Brown provides this analysis:

Twice before, both times in the [Passion Narrative], Mark has spoken of naos, “the sanctuary.” Before the chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin, there was given against Jesus false testimony, namely, that he had been heard saying, “I will destroy this sanctuary made by hand, and within three days another not made by hand I will build” (14:58). As Jesus hung on the cross, those who passed by were blaspheming him, “Aha, O one destroying the sanctuary and building it in three days …” (15:29). Part of the import of the present narrative, which constitutes a third reference to the sanctuary, must be that Jesus is vindicated: Rending the veil of the sanctuary has in one way or another destroyed that holy place. (Another almost identical sequence of three passages deals with the issue of Jesus’ claim to be the Messiah, the Son of God—14:61; 15:32; 15:39: at the Sanhedrin, on the cross, after death—and there too the last one vindicates Jesus.) Nevertheless, Mark does not explain exactly how rending its veil destroys the sanctuary, and so we must analyze the image, as to both the rending and the sanctuary veil.

(1) The rending. Clearly the passive “was rent” makes God the agent. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry the heavens were “rent” so that the voice of God could speak from them and declare of Jesus, “You are my beloved Son” (1:10–11); now God from heaven intervenes again, rending the veil of the sanctuary so that the centurion in the next verse will be brought to confess, “Truly this man was God’s Son.” In 15:34 Jesus with a loud cry screamed out his sense of being forsaken by God, only to be mocked by those standing there. By the violent rending (schizein) God responds vigorously, not only to vindicate Jesus whom God has not forsaken, but also to express anger at the chief priests and Sanhedrin who decreed such a death for God’s Son. Several early Christian witnesses confirm this interpretation of the rending as an angry act. In Test. Levi 10:3, when God can no longer endure Jerusalem because of the wickedness of the priests, the veil of the Temple is rent so that their shame can no longer be covered. In GPet the signs that surround the death of Jesus, including the veil of the sanctuary being torn in two (5:20), show that he is just (8:28) and lead the Jews, the elders, and the priests to say, “Woe to our sins. The judgment has approached and the end of Jerusalem” (7:25). Indeed, that same gospel, by using the verb “tear” (as noted above), suggests a connection between the high priest’s tearing of his clothes before the Sanhedrin as he demanded Jesus’ death (Mark 14:63) and God’s rending of the veil at Jesus’ death, with the latter as an angry response to the former. After all, at that very moment in the Sanhedrin trial Jesus warned the high priest that he and his fellow judges would see the Son of Man coming (14:62)—a coming in judgment that has commenced at the cross.^[1]

Church of the Holy Sepulcher: traditional burial site for Jesus (Israel Trip 2017) LFL

Stone of Anointing associated with the place where Christ's body was laid and prepared for burial (Israel Trip 2017) LFL

Alternative site associated with the burial of Jesus: it is located just outside the Old City of Jerusalem (Israel Trip 2018) LFL 

Replacement Theology (or supersessionism) is the view that Christianity has replaced or superseded Judaism.  Although there are ancient texts and writers that might appear to lend support to such an argument, beginning in the 1960s the Catholic Church has made it clear that such a view is unacceptable.   The Church has its roots and continued continuity with Israel; Jews are not to be thought as rejected or accursed by God; the Church rejects hatred, persecution, and anti-Semitism that are targeted at Jews at any time and by anyone (Nostra Aetate 4).   The Jewish people and Israel remain “most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts He makes nor of the calls He issues” (Lumen Gentium 16).  Israel remains a chosen people.  They are “the pure olive on which were grafted the branches of the wild olive,” that is the Gentiles (Catholic Church, Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, VI. 1).  More recently Pope Francis has reaffirmed in Evangelii Gaudium that we hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked, for “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”

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^[1] Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah and 2: From Gethsemane to the Grave,  a Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels (vol. 1; New York; London: Yale University Press, 1994), 1099–1101.