LENT 2016 - GOING TO JERUSALEM

Holy Week, Good Friday, March 25

The Death of Jesus: Matthew 27: 45 – 56

            Jesus breathed his last.

            We might tend to think that death would have been a welcome relief and a release from all that agony on the cross. Thank God it was finally over.  One last gasp, one final breath, one concluding moment of his life, and then Jesus was dead. He breathed his last breath.

            I am taken back to the First Garden, where God “formed man out of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils and the man became a living being,” (Genesis 2:7). Through the breath of God, we found our humanity, our identity, our individuality, our spirit, and our distinctiveness.  

            Breath, the necessary element for life. A child leaves the womb and the very, first thing he or she does is to gasp for their own, sweet breath and begin life’s great adventure.

We breathe and take in the aromas and scents that make life worth living – the mouth-watering smell of warm, baked bread, the powdery smell of a bath-fresh baby, the salty smells of an ocean breeze, the spicy smell of a pine forest after a rainfall…  

            “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord,” (Psalm 150:6).

            Breathing is loving. Have you ever had your breath taken away by someone you love? Have you ever lain beside a loved one and watched them breathe, grateful for every breath?  Have you ever snuck into your baby’s room just to make sure that he or she was breathing?

            “This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.” (Ezekiel 37:6) Breath is gift, life, love, and hope.

            Jesus breathed his last. And it was over. He was, as is anyone without breath, very dead! He was not comatose, feigning death, near death, or just unconscious, but he had breathed his last.

And with that last breath, some earth-shattering, holy business was under way. Something sacred was reshaping in the dust of graves and tombs. Some new wind, in Hebrew ruach, also meaning spirit, was sweeping through the cracks of airless crypts, and breathing new life into the possibility of resurrection.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,

Fill me with life anew,

That I may love what Thou dost love,

And do what Thou wouldst do. (E. Hatch)