The Death of Jesus

³³At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. ³⁴And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

³⁵When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”

³⁶One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.

³⁷With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

³⁸The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.³⁹And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

⁴⁰Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. ⁴¹In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.

There’s been a few moments in my life when this passage has had a strong impact on me. The most recent was last year during a class at college. We had spent the term looking at Colossians 1:15 – 20 which talks about Christ, the one by whom ‘all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible … all things were created by him and for him’.

After a few weeks of considering Christ as the creator of all things, we watched the scene of his death in ‘The Passion of the Christ’. I’ve seen the movie a few times and I’ve always found it a little unsettling, but this day was very different. I came to the conclusion that its inadequate to say that Jesus died for me. Because he didn’t JUST die. He was tortured, and humiliated. He was everyone’s enemy. And during this, while his was nailed to a cross, he calls to his father and he is mocked some more. He didn’t just die for me.

He also didn’t just die FOR me, he died because of me. Isaiah 53 says ‘We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all’.

Watching the portrayal of this scene from Marks gospel I felt the full weight of that, probably for the first time. I don’t think I had ever really considered before what my part was in Jesus’ death. It’s easy to remove myself from it or to think that if I were there I would have been one of the good, faithful women who had followed him and cared for him. But I realized that it’s much more likely that I would have joined those mocking Jesus that day. In fact I did join them, because his death was a culmination of everyone’s sin, including mine. My sin isn’t just something that happens in my life, years after Jesus’ death – I was right there in the midst of it all, because he was wearing MY sin on the cross. Jesus, the one who created all things, who gave all people breath, breathed his last because of my sin.

So that was quite an overwhelming and emotion hour not just for me, but my whole class. After class I sat with some friends just trying to work out what it was that we were feeling and how to pick up and get on with our day. I see the answer in this passage. While it reminds me of the magnitude of my sin and the part my sin played in Jesus’ death, it also shows me the power of his death and why I don’t have to worry about those things too much.

At first it may not seem that impressive that when he died the curtain in the temple was torn in two, but it’s a beautiful sign of what happened in that moment. When I become a Christian one of the first things that really amazed me was the size and the power of Jesus’ ability to forgive us. I had being struggling with the thought that my sin was too big for Jesus to forgive.

But here we see not just any curtain, but a massive 3-inch think curtain that separated sinful man from a Holy God, spontaneously tear in two. And we see a centurion, a Roman soldier who was there to take part in the crucifixion, confess ‘surely this man is the son of God’. Jesus’ death is powerful enough to abolish the divide between us and God, and powerful enough to make the most unlikely people confess that he is Lord, and powerful enough to forgive even my sin.

I was to reflect on what this passage means to me for our Good Friday service. To me it means that Christ was tortured, humiliated and died not just for me, but because of me and that this it’s powerful enough to bring me forgiveness. Surely that means I owe him my life. Because surely this man IS the Son of God.