and the burden of my heart rolled away."

"It was there by faith, I received my sight;

and now I am happy all the day."

A lot has been written about the women at the cross, but not very much has been said about the men at the foot of the cross.

Particularly, the Roman men.

Three Roman soldiers attended to the crucifixion of Jesus.

Three soldiers were at the cross, but only one of them saw the light.

One of the attributes that the Roman Empire pointed to with pride was its ability to keep order. The empire believed that it had been chosen to conquer the world; to subdue the barbarians and bring them into civilization.

It was the Empire's mission to bring order into the broken world.

So even in that distant province of Judea, way off on the edge of the world, anything that bought disorder into the empire, was distasteful to Rome.

Crucifixion was a special kind of execution created for people who disrupted the order of the empire. Crucifixion was reserved for political prisoners, for traitors, and for revolutionaries.

Crucifixion was meant to be not just an execution, but a public sign and warning, that any disruption of order and discipline would not be tolerated.

Soldiers in the Roman military were trained to keep order.

If that meant that a citizen had to be hurt or killed, then that was just what had to happen. Quite often the men who were successful in the military life were men who took pleasure in hurting people.

So the men who performed the execution of Jesus were experts in their jobs. They knew how to make people hurt.

And they set about their task in an orderly way.

They laid out the three crosses; they nailed each man upon his cross; they then lifted and dropped each cross into its hole.

It was also their job to monitor the crucifixion site until each of the victims died. On this day they were witnesses to history.

They were there at the foot of the cross.

They heard the anger of the holy men.

They heard the ridicule of the crowd.

They heard the words of Jesus from the cross:

To the Father, " Forgive them, for they know not what they do." To the thief, "Today you will be with me in paradise." To his mother, "Woman, behold your son." To the Disciple John, "Son, behold you mother." The words of agony, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" "I thirst." "It is finished." The final words, "Into your hands I commend my spirit."
Each soldier saw and heard. But each man had a different reaction.
One man only cared about what he could recoup.

One man rejected what he heard, and responded with revenge.

And one man saw and heard, and received a revelation.

To the first soldier mentioned it seemed to be just another workday.

Perhaps he had seen so much violence in his job that he had placed a wall between himself and the rest of the world. He heard the words of Jesus, but the only blessing he chose to receive was the robe of Jesus that he won in a dice game.

One of the perks of being on crucifixion duty was that the soldiers would receive the dead mans clothes and possessions.

The first soldier reflected the attitude, "What's in it for me?"

So the soldier received the worldly possession of Jesus, but he missed possessing the spiritual blessing.

The second soldier seemed to like his work too much.

The words of Jesus had no effect upon him.

In order to make the prisoners die quicker, the soldiers would break their legs. If a person being crucified could not use their legs to push up on to get air into their lungs, they would soon suffocate.

This soldier was the man assigned to break the prisoner's legs.

The soldier broke the legs of the other two prisoners, then he saw that Jesus was already dead.

But for some unknown reason, he thrust the point of his spear into the side of Jesus. He deliberately mutilated the body of Jesus.

Perhaps something Jesus said on the cross was offensive to him.

Perhaps he did this at every crucifixion, just for the fun of it.

We do not know.

We do know that he heard the words of Jesus and he rejected them.

He seemed to be saying, "I can do anything I want", "Don't get in my way or I will hurt you!"

He was so caught up in his own anger that he could not hear or understand anything from Jesus.

The third soldier listened and observed.

The third soldier said: "Truly this was the son of God."

The soldier was not a stranger to the agony of crucifixion.

The soldier had seen many men go to their deaths on a cross.

But there was something different about this man Jesus.

He talks to God in a personal way, as if He knows that His words are being heard. He asks God to forgive His murderers.

He assures another man that he can enter paradise.

There is something different about this man Jesus!!

The thought in the third soldiers mind was, "I want to get some of what He has got."

Someone once said that if you want to know about a man's relationship with God, don't look at the way he lived; look at the way that he died.

The way Jesus died made an impression on that Roman soldier.

Some people may ask us why three soldiers reaction to the death of Jesus is important to us?

It is important because we carry the attitudes of the soldiers with us, in our own reactions to the death of Jesus Christ.

Some of us believe that we can insulate ourselves from the rest of the world by our possessions. We believe that the robes we accumulate in our lives are enough to cover us up and keep us warm in all of our times of need.

One soldier missed the focus of Jesus' words, because he was focused on Jesus' robe.

When we focus on the robe, without a knowledge of the living God, our life will be a crapshoot.

Some of us believe that we can keep ourselves from being hurt by being meaner and stronger than anybody else.

One soldier heard the words of Jesus, but the words were not strong enough to knock down the wall he had built around himself.

We can be content to live as we have always lived; by our own thoughts and our own actions. And when we die, we will be alone.

Many people are in a place where the can not hear the word of Jesus because their material possessions or their emotional baggage have acted like wax in their ears.

Some of us who have experienced our own time at the foot of the cross have a responsibility to be wax removers to our brothers and sisters.

I wonder if the third soldier had a chance to talk to the other two men about his experience at the cross. I hope he did.

I hope that he shared with them the fact that the whole reason Jesus died was so they could have life, and have it more abundantly.

At the cross. At the cross. Where I first saw the Light.

Three men stood at the foot of the cross.

One received the blessing of a robe.

One received a bursting of his pride.

And one received the knowledge of the blessing of Eternal Life.

What will you receive at the foot of the cross?

AMEN