“It is finished.” “It is accomplished.” It must have sounded so strange to the crowd gathered on that hill called Golgotha. The events of the day weren’t really out of the ordinary. Three rebels were hanging on crosses – a punishment that fit their crime. The inscription above the one seems strange, “King of the Jews.” Not much of a king if he’s dying on a cross, they must have thought, but words of mockery are not uttered in John’s gospel, instead the focus is on how in control of it all Jesus is. As he slowly suffocated while enduring excruciating pain he took care of his last will and testament. “Mom, take care of my friend.” “My dear disciple, take care of my mother.” He then worked out the last of his prophetic fulfillments by asking for a drink from the cross. Then, he mustered up the strength to say, “it is finished,” bowed his head and gave up his Spirit.
“OK,” the crowd must have thought, “that bit was weird.” And we might think the same thing. What was finished? We approach Good Friday from the other side of Easter Day. As hard as we might try, we can’t really feel the depth of pain that those four women must have felt. We don’t have a clue as to how scary it must have been for Jesus’ followers that you could count on one hand the number who stuck around to see it all unfold. And we most certainly need help wrapping our mind around what might have been finished as Jesus gave up his Spirit. As Tony Campolo says, “It’s Friday… but Sunday’s a-comin!” “It isn’t finished!” we want to stand up and yell, “Whatever it is, it ain’t over!”
In reality, however, much was finished as Jesus breathed his last. To be frank, the first thing that was over for Jesus was the whole dying thing. As Barbra Brown Taylor says, “Death is not painful. It is the dying [on a cross] that hurts.”[1] For the blood thirsty crowd, this is a disappointment. For Jesus’ mother, it has to be a mixed blessing as the suffer was now over. For the Jews, it is a relief; they can get rid of his body before sundown. However you look at it, Jesus is dead, that part is over.
The second thing that is finished is Operation “self-annihilating love”. From the time that God removed Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden until three in the afternoon on that Day of Preparation God had been hard at work trying to restore the relationship between himself and humanity. He tried talking directly to them, he tried floods, he tried punishing them, the tried freeing them from slavery, he tried the law, he tried the prophets, he tried kings, he tried to use outside kingdoms, he tried to use the religious authorities – and finally all that was left was loving us so much that his own identity became wrapped up in ours as he descended and became man. On the night before he died, Jesus said to his friends, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” “Having explained this [new plan] to his friends, he then left the room to go do it. Less than twenty-four hours later, it was finished.”[2] Operation Self-Annihilating Love had lasted for millennia, but with this final act, it was now finished.
The third thing that was finished in that moment was, for all intents and purposes, the Temple. While the Temple wouldn’t be destroyed for another 30 or so years, we hear in the other accounts of this day that the curtain to the holy of holies was torn from top to bottom. The barrier that divided the religious authorities from the regular people, Jew and Gentile, was now broken. The rules heaped upon rules stacked on rules were now moot. The death of Jesus and the thundering aftermath made sure that the artificial divides were now gone. “There were two bloody places in Jerusalem that day – Golgotha and the Temple [where Passover lambs were being slaughtered]—both attended by powerful religious people who believed they were doing God’s will… But the system did not exist to protect God. The system existed to protect the system. Jesus was the last lamb of God who would die for the people.”[3]
Finally, this afternoon, we will deal with a fourth thing that was finished as Jesus died. “When Jesus gave up his spirit, he was not thirsty anymore. He dove back into the stream of living water from which he had sprung and swam all the way back home.”[4] As the hour of Jesus’ crucifixion drew near, his relationship with the Father became more and more strained. I don’t believe that there was a point where God had removed himself from Jesus, they were always united, but as Jesus’ human will struggled with the will of the Father, that relationship no doubt came under pressure. In the moment Jesus gave up his Spirit there was a glorious party as Father and Son were reunited in perfect harmony. Be it the 33 years that Jesus walked the earth or the 20 or so hours while Jesus struggled with his destiny, it was finished, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were back in perfect relationship once again.
“It is finished.” Did it ever sound strange, that Jesus would utter a word of triumph as he, a supposedly failed king, died on a cross. But in that moment, so much was accomplished, even without the surprise of Easter Day. Thanks be to God that he is in control making this Friday Good. Praise Jesus that he gave himself up to death so that barriers might be broken; between us and God, between the religious system and God, and between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is a Good Friday indeed. Much has been accomplished. Amen.
[1] http://www.explorefaith.com/homiliesLent/20000421e.html [March 18, 2008].
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
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