It is finished.

It’s dark.
It’s about three in the afternoon. It’s not meant to be dark.

Instantly we know that there is something mysterious going on. Something other-worldly is occurring on this rugged landscape outside Jerusalem. And out of the darkness Jesus speaks

“My God”

My God? This is Jesus, the Son crying out to his father and yet he switches to a cry of desperation to his God.

Do you ever have those times when you’re feeling so hurt, so low, so depressed even, that you don’t ‘feel’ like praying but at the same time you know you need to get something off your chest and direct it at God? Sometimes it’s useful to use somebody else’s prayer, someone else’s words to express the pain you’re going through.

He’s quoting Psalm 22 at this point so, maybe, the agony he is enduring as part of this divine plan is too much to bear for his human emotions and he relies on the liturgy, the church songs, of the day. In his humanity he uses someone else’s prayer of pain and desolation to cry out to God.

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” - “My God, Why have You abandoned me?”

Even in that simple cry, those around him still missed the point – they thought he was calling Elijah the prophet to come and bail him out. For three years they had followed him around and it never quite clicked for them in their minds or hearts what he was saying, and even at his death they didn’t get it.

Then, ‘with a loud cry', Jesus breathed his last… On the surface this just seems like a tragic end of a great life. But there is something a little more puzzling than just Jesus dying. Death by crucifixion usually came in the form of exhaustion and suffocation, the victim unable to raise his body enough for the lungs to draw in air. The breaking of the victim’s legs was a way of quickening the process. Ordinarily, the victim would pass out, unconscious due to lack of oxygen, before death occurred. And all this would take place often over an extended period of time. It was known for some to endure days on a cross before dying.

So how was it that Jesus cried out in a loud voice and died after just six hours? Again, perhaps the answer lies within the mystery surrounding this episode.Those around not seeing the wood for the trees. There was more going on at Calvary than just the death of an innocent Jewish carpenter turned rabbi.

Christ on the cross was the substitute for mankind in a salvation plan brilliantly conceived within the Godhead.

Jesus Christ - God the Son - in his 100% humanity would take the place of mankind, acting humbly and totally obediently in the Holy Spirit who would enable him to complete such a difficult task, to stay focused and pure to the end.

The Father, Loving and Compassionate – the personal God who longs for a relationship with his people - Holy and Just, would execute the penalty for sin upon his Son. If death is the wages or reward of sin then Jesus here is paid in full. ‘Heaven’s peace and perfect Justice’ and demonstrated here. God’s loving-justice is perfectly calculated and direct and Jesus bares it all in our place.

Grace and Mercy towards His people. Grace; getting that which we don’t deserve, has to be mixed with Mercy; notgetting what we do deserve. We’ve sinned and fallen short, we deserve to die. The Merciful God sent his Son to die in our place.

In short, the Spiritual, physical and emotional agony of being separated from God, being beaten to within an inch of his life and nailed to a cross and left to hang and die, to be abandoned by his closest friends and family and humiliated in front of those who opposed him, I think it is fair to say, without getting too wishy-washy, that Jesus died of a Broken Heart. The awesome weight of sin crushing him, the abandonment of his Father isolating him – it would be enough to make anyone lose the will to live. And so, in total human agony the Son of God cries out... and dies.

That is the mystery of the Cross – we may never know the exact terms of the transaction, we may never endure anything close to the pain Jesus endured on that Friday, but the mystery surrounding the perfect sacrifice that God accepted on our behalf has opened a way so that “all who believe in Him shall not die, but have eternal life.”