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.