6^th April 2007; Good Friday, Ecumenical Service; John 19:30

“It is Finished”

I. 

I. SIMPLY RELIEVED OF SUFFERING?

My best friend in junior high was a devout Roman Catholic.  On Good Friday he would stand in his living room with his arms outstretched, as though he was nailed to a cross, and say prayers from noon until three.  The idea of doing such a thing had never occurred to me as a Protestant, but I was intrigued by his willingness to ponder the sufferings of Jesus in such a physical way.  In fact, it helped me ponder the sufferings of Jesus, just knowing that Jimmy was standing with his arms outstretched.  As devout as Jimmy was, however, I suspect that as the afternoon went on, he had his eyes on the clock to some extent: “Only 30 minutes to go…  Only 20 minutes…  Just 10 more…”  Finally, with a sigh, he could drop his arms and say, “Well, it’s finished.”

As we contemplate the sufferings of Jesus this afternoon, we have reached his sixth Word, “It is finished.”  We know that he was about to die at this point, so were his words said to indicate that his relief that he had to endure the pain of the cross only a few more minutes?  Was he saying, “The end is near.  I will die and have peace at last”?  Were his words only about that afternoon?

II. MORE THAN MISERY WAS FINISHED

“It is finished,” said Jesus.  He was not just looking forward to the relief of death.  Far more was happening than a painful and tragic execution.  Jesus was not simply a good man dying bravely after being unjustly condemned, winning a moral victory over a flawed system by his courage and grace.  Jesus did not simply inspire us to fight for the good and to meet hardship with courage.

The cross was not just a method of execution.  There was far more going on than the Romans getting rid of the source of trouble among the Jews.  When we look at the Gospels, we can see that Jesus knew that he was going to be executed.  In Mt. 16, Jesus asks his disciples who they believe him to be.  When Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus assures him that he has had a divine insight into Jesus’ identity.  Once the disciples are confident of Jesus’ identity, he begins to teach them what that means.  In Mt. 16:21, we read, “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

Of course, this statement raises another question: was Jesus simply recognizing that if he continued to teach and heal as he did that he would enrage the Jewish leaders to the point that they would have him executed?  Was his prediction of death the insight of a wise man who had principles he was determined to live by?  No, Jesus’ death came about for a far larger reason than a willingness to die for a deeply held principle.  In Mt. 20:28, we hear Jesus say why he would die: “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

III. JESUS REDEEMS US FROM SLAVERY

Jesus spoke of a ransom.  Ransoms are paid to release people from captivity.  Who is in captivity that Jesus needs to ransom?  The Jews of Jesus’ day were living in an occupied land.  They were ruled by a foreign, Gentile power.  They longed to be free, to be ruled by God’s appointed King, not by Caesar or one of his puppets like Herod.  To the Jews, freedom from Rome meant that the Roman army would need to be defeated.  Then they would have the freedom they desired.

But Jesus knew that the problem the Jews faced was not simply Roman domination.  It was not a political problem.  And even though Jesus was a teacher, the problem was not a problem of ignorance, to be solved by more information.  The problem was a problem of the heart.  In Mt. 15:18-20a, we hear Jesus speaking of the bondage that holds humanity enslaved: “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.  For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.  These are what defile a person…”  And in John 8:34, Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”  We are enslaved to sin.  The roots of sin go deep into our hearts.

Consider for a moment the times you are in a long line at the grocery, or stuck in traffic when you were already late.  What goes through your mind at such times?  Do you wish that you could simply walk to the head of the line?  Do you want to pull into the breakdown lane and drive right past everyone in the regular lanes?  You might want to do these things – indeed, perhaps the only thing that stops you from going to the head of the line or driving past all the stalled traffic is the angry response you know you would get from the others in the bank or on the road.  But the attitude that gives rise to the desire to jump ahead in line or move around traffic is one that says, “I am more important than anyone else.  If the world were properly arranged, everyone would have to wait on me.”  With regard to God, this attitude says, “God, what is the matter with you?  Here you have got me stuck in traffic.  Here you are, wasting my time in the bank line!  Get with it, God – make sure things are arranged for my convenience.  Better yet, step aside so I can run things!”

These are small things, but from tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow.  That little thought that says God has not done all he ought to have done for me can express itself in many ways, from simply a muttered curse to robbery or murder.  It is the heart, as Jesus says, that is the source of uncleanliness.  We may not be as clearly sinful as the murderer, but we have the same thoughts, the same desire to have God let us call the shots.  This is the slavery to which we are all captive.

Yet God is God.  No one can take his place, and we are dependent on him whether we acknowledge that dependence or not.  To desire to take his place is to separate ourselves from him.  As Paul says in Rom. 6:23, “the wages of sin is death.”  God is the source of life.  We cannot replace God without losing the source of our life.  The judgment that God decrees is that, if we desire to live without him, we will indeed live without him – and find how desperately we need him.  Hell is one long agony of regret, wanting God and at the same time wanting to take God’s place.  The agony of hell comes not from the fire, but from the howling loneliness of those who are trapped in their rebellion and who will not let God be God.

We human beings need God, and we are willing to search for him.  We usually try to earn his acceptance.  I recently read of a Buddhist monk in Japan.  On September 18, 2003, Genshin Fujinami, 44, a Buddhist monk nicknamed the "Marathon Monk," finished a seven-year, 24,800-mile journey in the Hiei Mountains of Japan.  It was intended to be a trek to enlightenment.  Once a monk starts this journey he must finish or kill himself.  According to an Associated Press article, for the first three years the pilgrim must rise at midnight for 100 consecutive days to pray and run 18 miles per day, stopping 250 times to pray along the way.  During the next two years, he must increase his schedule to 200 days.  In the fifth year the pilgrim must sit and chant mantras for nine days without food, water, or sleep in a trial called doiri, or “entering the temple.”  In the sixth year, he must walk 37.5 miles every day for 100 days.  In the seventh year, he must run 52.5 miles for 100 days, 18 miles for another 100 days, and then complete a 234-mile trek back to his home base.  That effort is evidence of a great desire to have spiritual peace.

Yet there is nothing that we can do to earn God’s acceptance.  We are trapped in our wrongdoing and we cannot correct ourselves by ourselves. 

The wages of sin is death, the howling loneliness of being without God.  It was that howling loneliness that Jesus experienced when he cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”  Jesus, who had never sinned, experienced the wages of sin.  He had not earned that wage.  He had earned exactly the opposite – full acceptance by a lifetime of complete obedience.  So why did he receive those wages?  Simply put, he received them on our behalf.  We earned death – he took death for us.  In the movie The Last Emperor, the young child anointed as the last emperor of China lives a life of luxury with 1,000 servants at his command.  “What happens when you do wrong?” his brother asks.  “When I do wrong, someone else is punished,” the boy emperor replies.  To demonstrate, he breaks a jar, and one of the servants is beaten.  But Jesus reversed that pattern: when the servants erred, the King was punished.  Grace is free only because the giver himself has borne the cost.

When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he was bearing the judgment of God on our sins for us.  We cannot comprehend the utter agony of that moment, as the fellowship of the Father and his incarnate Son was broken.  He experienced the pains of hell.  In Mt. 20:28, Jesus had said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  The agony of hell paid the ransom for us.

IV. “PAID IN FULL”

A few moments before he died, Jesus said, “It is finished.”  In Greek, the word is “tetelestai.”  It is a word that was used in commerce.  When a merchant wrote “tetelestai” in his ledger, it meant, “Paid in full.”  The customer had no more obligations to the merchant.  Jesus paid our account in full.  He had done what he had come to do.  He had given his life as a ransom for many, for all who place their hope in him.  He had borne the pains of hell for us, so that we could enjoy the bliss of heaven with him.

My friend Jimmy stood for three hours with his arms stretched out, as though they were nailed to a cross.  In the last half hour or so, he must have been thinking, “only a few more minutes.”  He breathed a sigh of relief when three o’clock rolled around.  But when Jesus came to the end of his time on the cross, he did not just say, “Well, I’m glad that’s over with…”  He said, “It is finished,” with a note of triumph, for he knew that his death had done its job.  He had freed us from slavery and had won for us the right to be fully accepted by God the Father.  He was not saying that his life was over.  He was saying that his life’s purpose had been met.  He came to rescue us, and rescue us he did.  Now, when we feel the burden of our failure to do what God has commanded us to do, we can look at the cross and say.  “It is finished.  My debt is paid in full.”