April 02, 2010
Sermon
"It is Finished"
Good Friday John
19: 17 - 42 April 2, 2010 "It
is finished
He said, "It is finished," bowed his head and gave
up his Spirit. What was it that was finished that dread day on
Calvary's hill? What exactly was finished when Jesus whispered
these final words? Did he mean, that his cause was finished,
his ministry to bring sacrificial love to the world that God
so dearly loved; this ministry brought to a brutal close? Was
he referring to the end of his own torment, that long slow process
of bleeding, gasping for breath, yielding at last to the pain
that seared every cell of his body? What was it that was finished?
Might Jesus have meant that
all suffering was ended? that henceforth those who believe in
him will no longer have to suffer mental anguish or physical
pain? We know that wasn't it. Suffering continues still. Each
day our newspapers report modern day crucifixions: children struck
down in drive-by shootings, obituaries of loved ones who have
not fulfilled their years, families stunned by random accident,
earthquakes that leave hundreds of thousands suddenly homeless,
brutal political regimes that wipe out those who oppose them.
Might Jesus have meant that sin is finished? Was the power of
evil broken by the cross? Yet twenty one centuries later, these
powers are still a lively, prospering force in the world: our
beautiful, fragile earth, our island home in the universe, dies
a little each day from the poisons of pollution. The gasoline
prices come down from shocking numbers a couple of years ago
and people are not quite so interested in other energy sources.
The earth, stripped of vegetation, cannot feed her people dying
of starvation and or give drink to the thirsty from polluted
waters.
Is it not evil that infects
our secular and sacred institutions with the moral diseases of
corruption and injustice, diseases of the soul that have spread
like a virus. Is it not evil that divides the human heart, separating
the children of God into categories of privileged and those less
privileged, dividing us, alienating us from one another by divisions
of race or age or ethnic group or sexual orientation or gender?
And who among us who would dare throw the first stone?
What then was finished by
this death? What did the Man of Sorrows mean when he uttered
those final words, "It is finished"? Surely, it was
not a sigh of resignation. Surely these words were not words
of failure, but rather were words of fulfillment.
How could this be? It didn't
seem as if anything good was completed as Jesus was lifted high
above the earth on that remnant of a tree? What was fulfilled
as Jesus breathed his last?
These words, "It is finished"
proclaimed to heaven and earth that the separation, that gulf
dividing God from the beloved but rebellious children of Adam
was at an end. The separation that is described in our story
of a tree in the Garden of Eden is over - as Jesus is lifted
high upon another tree at Golgotha. This separation is ended
when God came to live with us, to accept our rejection, even
to the cruel extreme of dying on a cross. Here lifted over the
earth, with out stretched out arms, Love bridges the yawning
gap of human sin, guilt and shame, embracing us instead with
love.
"It is finished":
Sin, guilt, separation from our creator God and from one another,
gathered into the arms of Hope, the arms of Reconciliation, the
arms of forgiveness and marked as Christ's own: over, completed,
finished, once for all. Now we who are marked as Christ's own
are called to remember that even as our most hidden guilt and
secret shame is finished, we must find a way to also forgive.
Not forget, but forgive. Can we live as if it is truly finished?
Can we let go of the guilt that has tormented us? Can we let
go of our sense of shame, our personal belief in not being good
enough? Can we find the path of forgiveness that not only releases
those who have harmed us, but frees us as well?
Dear Lord, for all that is
ended, finished, over and done on this Good Friday, I thank you
now. May we offer up to the Cross of Christ, our shame and guilt,
our unforgiveness, and whatever sin, great or subtle which we
have held as more powerful than your pronouncement: "It
is finished." Give us your grace to relinquish all that
separates us from you and from one another, as we meditate on
the Cross this evening and prayerfully accept the full meaning
of your words, "It is finished." AMEN.
