Let er’ Rip!

            How was your Easter last month?  Did you hide eggs for your kids . . . gorge yourself on silly looking chocolate bunnies . . . put on your go-to-church leathers for your annual church service . . . or did you notice at all?  Easter means many things to many people, but for millions of people around the world it is the most sacred of all religious holidays.  It’s a celebration that commemorates the day in history when all of us were given a second chance at life.  I don’t mean breathing, walking, eating, sleeping, working life – I mean REAL life!  The God kind of life!

            It’s true that the main focus of Easter is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, when he came back to life after his crucifixion in order to conquer death.  But something happened immediately after Christ’s death that beautifully symbolizes the primary purpose of his death and resurrection.  Did you see Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”?   If so, try to remember the scenes that took place at the precise moment that Jesus took his last breath.  One of the things that happened as the sky turned dark and the earth shook was the ripping of a thick curtain in the main temple of Jerusalem.  Now that doesn’t necessarily sound like a big deal until you understand the purpose and symbolic significance of that curtain.

            The Jews’ most sacred object was the “Arc of the Covenant”, which represented the presence of God.  It was a wooden box about three feet wide, two feet high, and two feet deep, but it had been made by the first Jewish priests during their desert wanderings under Moses.  It was hundreds of years old, and so precious to the Jewish people that no one could touch it.  In fact, it was kept in a special place in the temple called the “Holy of Holies”, which was separated from the rest of the temple by an intricately woven curtain that some historians describe as being several inches thick and over 20 feet tall.

            In 2 places in the book of Matthew, we are told that when Jesus died the veil (curtain) in the temple was torn from top to bottom.  If it had been torn by people it would gave been torn from the bottom to the top.  But I believe God wanted to do away with that symbolic separation between himself and mankind, so he decided to “let er’ rip”, and tore the veil between us from top to bottom, as only he could have done.

            But what does this mean for us?  Two things.  First, it meant that God was tired of being viewed as dwelling only behind a thick curtain in a little wooden box, inaccessible to his creation.  Even though that’s where lots of people still try to keep God – in a box or behind a curtain, God came to “dwell among us” through Christ.  Second, everyone now has free access to God because Jesus made it possible for us to be reconciled to him.  Before Jesus’ death and resurrection, only the Jewish high priest could come before God’s presence (the Ark of the Covenant), and that was only one time per year.  But now there is nothing to keep us from coming freely to God, and entering into relationship with him through Jesus Christ.

            On that terrible day when Jesus died on the cross in order to pay for our sins, God didn’t choose to simply peak at us from behind the curtain.  No, he ripped that thing right down the middle, forever destroying the barrier between us and himself so that we can enter the God kind of life!