“With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.”  ~ Mark 15:37

Can you hear it?  The slowing, agonizing, laboured breath of a dying man?  With each breath, you stand by quietly and wonder if the next breath will be his last.

And then it finally is.  And it is finished.

Jesus gives out a loud cry with whatever energy he can muster, and he breathes his last.  Jesus, the Son of God – the very Breath of Life, the Breath of Heaven, the one who with his Father breathed life into humanity at creation – breathed his last…

 

There is very rarely used and rarely spoken name for God.  It is considered an extremely sacred name, so sacred that Jews to this day will not even speak it.  It is the name God reveals to Moses on their very first encounter, and the same name that God calls himself throughout most of Scripture (over 6000 times.)  Most readers will see it in the Bible written as “LORD.”  But this sacred name God uses to reveals himself time and time again is this: 

“YHWH” –the “I Am Who I Am.”

Y H W H 

If you sound out each letter phonetically, you’ll notice they are all breath letters.  Each one is a  respiratory consonant, ones that require breath to pass through.  And these letters do the same in Hebrew. 

 

Y, H, W, H.

Almost like the rhythm of breathing.   In and out.

YHWH -- The I Am Who I Am – the God of being, the God of life and existence – reveals himself with a name of life and breath. 

At the cross, Jesus, the Son of God, who has spent 30+ years of breathing the same air as a human being  just like you and I, “breathes his last.”  The I Am Who I Am – the Y H W H whose name itself reveals he is the God of the Breath of Life – watches while his Son take his final breath. 

And Jesus—this same Son of God who breathed life into Lazarus and healed crowds of people, giving them their life and health and breath back – now takes his final breath, when he could have chosen to heal himself, to give himself life.  But he chose death.  The Breath chose death. 

And he did it for us.  All of us.  Jesus stopped breathing so that we may have life.  The “I AM” –“YHWH” --   the God of life and breath and existence – gave up his breath for us.  For you.  For me. 

Y H W H

“Jesus breathed his last”  …  so that when we too breathe our last on this earth, we will soon after take our first breath of eternity, and rise again to everlasting life and breath and existence… just like Jesus also did on that beautiful Easter morning…