The great breach

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.  Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.  --Isaiah 53:11-12

The word of the day is breach.  As a noun, it can mean an act of breaking or failing to observe a law, agreement, or code of conduct, as in "a breach of contract."  It can also mean a break in relations, as "a sudden breach between father and son."  It also means a gap in a wall, barrier, or defense, especially one made by an attacking army, as in "a breach in the castle wall."

In Mark 15:33-41, we see how the death of Jesus, the Son of God, caused a breach in the natural order, the spiritual order, and the levitical order.

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"  And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, He is calling Elijah."  And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to Him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take Him down."  And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed His last.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  And when the centurion, who stood facing Him, saw that in this way He breathed His last, he said, "Truly this man was the Son of God!"  There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.  When He was in Galilee, they followed Him and ministered to Him, and there were also many other women who came up with Him to Jerusalem.

We often look at the Passion narrative and see Jesus as a passive participant, allowing Himself to be mocked and spat upon, and submitting Himself to death.  That's all well and good, but there was a lot going on there that we don't often think about.  As the Cambridge Bible For Schools And Colleges says, "A veil hides from us the incidents of these three hours, and all the details of what our Lord, shrouded in the supernatural gloom, underwent for us men and for our salvation.”

A breach in the physical universe

It was midday, from noon to three, when the sun is known to be at its brightest.  Yet darkness was upon the whole land.  According to the Pulpit Commentary:

An account of it is given by Phlegon of Tralles, a freedman of the Emperor Adrian. Eusebius, in his records of the year A.D. , quotes at length from Phlegon, who says that, in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was a great and remarkable eclipse of the sun, above any that had happened before. At the sixth hour the day was turned into the darkness of night, so that stars were seen in the heaven; and there was a great earthquake in Bithynia, which overthrew many houses in the city of Nicaea. Phlegon attributes the darkness which he describes to an eclipse, which was natural enough for him to do. The knowledge of astronomy was then very imperfect. Phlegon also mentions an earthquake. This brings his account into very close correspondence with the sacred narrative.

It could not have been a lunar eclipse, because the Jewish feast of Passover is always held during a full moon.  When the moon is full, it cannot intervene between the sun and the earth.  The darkness was doubtless caused by the immediate interference of God.  The God of creation, who had spoken light into existence, could not allow light in this context, where as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."

A breach in the spiritual realm

During this period of darkness, Jesus cried out, saying, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  God literally turned His back on His Son, as the sin of the whole world was laid upon Him, because God cannot countenance sin.  Again, from the Pulpit Commentary:

We are not informed precisely how far the darkness extended. Dionysius says that he saw this phenomenon at Heliopolis, in Egypt, and he is reported to have exclaimed, "Either the God of nature, the Creator, is suffering, or the universe dissolving." St. Cyprian says, "The sun was constrained to withdraw his rays, and close his eyes, that he might not be compelled to look upon this crime of the Jews." To the same purpose St. Chrysostom, "The creature could net bear the wrong done to its Creator. Therefore the sun withdrew his rays, that he might not behold the deeds of the wicked."

Jesus quoted the first verse of Psalm 22, which hit agonizingly close to home.  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?"  The answer is that God could not look upon sin, yet Jesus became sin for us so that we could become righteous before God.  He took our sin and clothed us with His righteousness.  God punished Him so that we might be rewarded in heaven.  This is what I thought of when I saw the definition of breach to include a breach between a father and son.

A breach in the Levitical Law

Mark says that the veil in the temple, a curtain of thick material separating the priests from the Holy of Holies, was torn in two from top to bottom.  It was as though God had torn up the first covenant, the Old Testament if you will.  The Law could not be kept, so God mercifully breached that contract and replaced it with a New Covenant.  This New Covenant is one based on grace.

One of my favorite passages in Scripture is Zechariah 3:1-5.  The name Joshua means "God is deliverance."  Also, I believe that when the Old Testament speaks of the "Angel of the Lord", it is a reference to the pre-incarnate Christ.  With this in mind, look at the narrative here:

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.  And the Lord said to Satan, "The Lord rebuke you, O Satan!  The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!  Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?"  Now Joshua was standing before the Angel, clothed with filthy garments.  And the Angel said to those who were standing before him, "Remove the filthy garments from him.'  And to him He said, "Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments."  And I said, "Let them put a clean turban on his head." So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments.  And the Angel of the Lord was standing by.

The prophet Zechariah was painting a beautiful picture of the New Covenant, where a sinful man stands before God, clothed in nothing but his own sin.  Satan comes to accuse him, to brand him as condemned, abandoned, forsaken by God.  Yet Jesus stands in as defense attorney, and removes the man's guilt and shame, and clothes him in His righteousness.  This is the Gospel  This is good news!

Mark's narrative goes on to list the witnesses to this new contract, the New Covenant that replaced the Old Testament Law.  The centurion declared that this man was the Son of God.  The women who had attended to Jesus during His earthly ministry were witnesses to the new contract sealed by the blood of Jesus.  One of the women was Mary Magdelene, who had been a prostitute.  She was now clothed in His righteousness, not identified with her past failings.  We, also, can put aside our old sinful nature and stand before God in Christ's righteousness. 

Mocking and ridiculing Jesus, then and now

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!  Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.  --Luke 6:22-23 

Human nature is cruel.  From our childhood we crave acceptance from our peers, yet we learn early on to tease one another and mock each other, trying to make ourselves feel superior to others.  This universal human trait of verbal abuse is honed and sharpened through adolescence into early adulthood, when it is used as a weapon of choice for separating ourselves from someone strange and different, for ostracizing the out group while seeking approval from the in group.

In our passage today, Jesus is vilified and disparaged by three different groups of people.  We will take a look at those people, and see what Jesus went through in the hours leading up to His crucifixion.

And the soldiers led Him away inside the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion.  And they clothed Him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on Him.  And they began to salute Him, "Hail, king of the Jews!"  And they were striking His head with a reed and spitting on Him and kneeling down in homage to Him.  And when they had mocked Him, they stripped Him of the purple cloak and put His own clothes on Him.  And they led Him out to crucify Him.  And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry His cross.  And they brought Him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull).  And they offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He did not take it.  And they crucified Him and divided His garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take.  And it was the third hour when they crucified Him.  And the inscription of the charge against Him read, "The King of the Jews."  --Mark 15:16-26

The first group of people we see mocking and deriding Jesus are the soldiers.  Now most professional soldiers are supposed to keep their thoughts to themselves.  They are supposed to follow orders without inserting their own ideas or words into the scene.  These Roman soldiers, however, had a heyday with persecuting Jesus.  Perhaps some of them had been assigned to crowd control whenever Jesus came through the streets with throngs of followers behind Him.  Maybe they had tried to keep order when Jesus had taught in the local synagogues or from someone's home.  

The followers of Jesus did not respect order--remember when Jesus was teaching and the crowds were so large that a group of four men climbed up on the roof and tore it open so they could lower their paralyzed friend down to where Jesus stood?  Hoodlums.  Vandals.  Heathens.  These were the types of people who followed this lunatic called Jesus.

And now the soldiers were given a the order to crucify Him for crimes against Rome, and the placard they were supposed to post above His cross said, "The King of the Jews."  It was all too much.  They thought they might have a bit of fun at His expense.  They stripped Jesus, and put a purple robe on Him.  "You think You are a king?  I'll show You what a king looks like."  They fashioned some thorns into a crown and placed it on His head.  They picked up a reed and shoved it toward Him.  "Here's your scepter, your Majesty," I can hear them smirking.  When He did not take the reed, they beat Him with it.

When all the fun was over, they led Him out to be crucified.  When He fell under the weight of the cross, the soldiers grabbed a random man out of the crowd, an out-of-towner and father of two, to carry His cross.  The procession went down out of Jerusalem (which was built on a hill called Mount Zion) and up another hill called Golgotha.  They nailed Jesus to the cross, along with the inscription, then continued to mock Him.  "Wine, my liege?"  Jesus turned away from the noxious blend they offered Him.

And with Him they crucified two robbers, one on His right and one on His left.  And those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads and saying, "Aha!  You who would destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days, save Yourself, and come down from the cross."  So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked Him to one another, saying, "He saved others; He cannot save Himself.  Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe." --Mark 15:27-32a

The second group of people to mock Jesus that day were the religious leaders.  They were the ones who passed by in front of the cross, hurling insults up at Him.  They had heard Him teaching and had seen His miracles.  They thought that His comments about the Temple were nothing but heresy, so they tried to throw His own words back in His face.  These were the religious leaders who saw Jesus healing the sick and raising the dead, and then demanding more signs from Him whenever they confronted Him.  Nothing was ever enough for them, and even now they demanded another sign, another miracle.  "Show off Your divine power," they were saying, "and rescue Yourself.  Escape the nails holding Your hands and feet, and heal Your own wounds, if You're so high and mighty."

Those who were crucified with Him also reviled Him.  --Mark 15:32b

The third group of people to mock Jesus were the thieves who had been convicted to die with Him there that day.  Now we know from other gospel accounts that one of the condemned repented, and sought mercy from Jesus.  Mark doesn't mention him, but this account may indicate that there were perhaps more than three crosses on that hill that day.  We don't know for sure, but we do know that at least one of the robbers ridiculed Him.  In his human condition, the robber saw Jesus as no better than himself--a mere human, condemned to die, outcast from society and convicted of a crime.  After all, why else would He have been there hanging from his hands and feet, slowly bleeding out and dying of exposure?

These three groups of people represent lost people even today.  There are those who believe Jesus to be merely human, no better than themselves.  They seek to elevate their own humanity above Jesus' divinity, and ridicule any attempt to humble themselves or to elevate the Christ.  There are also those who were raised in the religious community who are always seeking signs and wonders.  They elevate Jesus to celebrity status as long as He entertains them, feeds them or meets their physical needs.  When Jesus is silent, however, they seek out other false teachers who uphold their own orthodoxy and meet their emotional needs in other ways.  Finally there are those who absolutely abhor all that Jesus stands for.  They kick Him and spit on Him whenever they can.  They hurl verbal abuse at Jesus and all who follow Him, trying to make themselves feel superior.

A few years after Jesus was crucified, we hear about a man named Paul.  He himself was a religious leader, a Pharisee who would have ridiculed this man who called Himself the Christ.  Not only that,  Paul had been a zealot, physically persecuting and putting to death any and all who followed Jesus.  After Paul's miraculous conversion to Christianity, however, Paul preached Jesus to all three of these groups.  He preached to religious leaders, to commoners, to prisoners, and even to Roman prison guards.  You see, no matter which group you fall into, you are not beyond forgiveness.

Maybe you are an adult who has made fun of other people to make yourself feel better.  Maybe you have made fun of Christians for their beliefs, for their blind faith.  Perhaps you have physically persecuted someone for his or her religious beliefs, or perhaps you think of Jesus as just a man, no more than a myth or a legend.  I pray you would consider the evidence, and humble yourself.  I pray you would come to Jesus and learn from Him.  When you hear His voice, I pray you would respond positively to His calling.  It could change your life.