It is Finished
Delivered at Joint Service at
First United Methodist Church of Evanston
Good Friday April 6, 2007
John 19:30
Rev. Dr James E. Roghair, Interim Minister, First Congregational Church of Evanston
John 19:30
When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Here we are in this comfortable and familiar setting. We have sung beautiful music. We have heard the familiar story: Jesus', final hours. The sour wine, and the now-familiar words: “It is finished.”
We know it well - perhaps too well. Do we take it for granted?
We don't take human suffering for granted - those grim reminders of human inhumanity in the daily news: A grizzly murder in a distant part of the city. War grinds on. Suicide bombings. Children lose parents, lose childhood and lose future. It is all inhuman, and it touches us.
But this scene of Jesus' final hours, does it still touch us? Perhaps it is spiritualized for us - between the candles and the soft music. “Were You There?” goes the Spiritual. We imagine we are there. It is a fuzzy spiritual experience. But what of the grit and the gore?
What was it really like?
No one had a microphone up to Jesus' lips to record when he said, “It is finished,” right on cue. Gospel writers assembled their narratives many years later, detached in time from the grit of that day. And their purposes were not to make a documentary, but to help us make meaning.
The words It is finished represents the culmination of Jesus' approach to his life, his work and his death. Jesus was not anxious about his life and work. He hadn't completely changed the world. People had not yet learned to love God completely, nor to love one another as brothers and sisters. But Jesus had done what he could do. These words express Jesus' non-anxious approach to his life. And it is that non-anxious approach that changes the world.
Martin Luther King, Jr. followed Jesus. The night before his death he said, “...I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm happy tonight... (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/king/speeches.html) .” King was changing the world. He was not anxious about it either.
Faithful saints in our own families witness, too. My own father was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. His prognosis was short, but he said, “Well, I've already lived longer than I expected. I'm ready” - a life well-lived.
It is finished, sums up Jesus' faithfulness to God. He was part of the human struggle. He had been faithful to the spirit of the Torah, to love God and to love one another, but not to the Pharisees' firm interpretation of the Torah. Jesus offered his life to the God he trusted: It is finished. And it becomes a new beginning for the world.
Amen.
Last Updated: Wednesday, February 6, 2008