Good Friday Meditation

The sixth of "the last seven words of Jesus" is “It is finished.”

This sentence strikes me as both triumphant and dark. I also think that when we come to it, we face at least two problems right away.

The first is that this sentence, It is finished, begs the question, What is finished?

The second problem we face is the temptation to leave this sentence too soon. We read “It is finished,” and we are tempted to ask, OK, what’s next?

I want to propose that we spend the next five five minutes or so resisting the temptation to move on. We will move on this Sunday (Easter), but for now—for this small space of time—let’s dwell in this little utterance of our Savior and see if by doing so we can arrive at some tentative conclusions to this first question.

“It is finished.”

What is finished?

Well gee, you might say, don’t make it more complicated than it is. Jesus was referring to his life and all the suffering he just went through. All of it is finally over as he breathes his last, and he says It Is Finished as an expression of relief and gratitude. What’s wrong with that?

And I would say in response, nothing at all. This understanding of the sentence, what we might call a literal or historical interpretation, is perfectly legitimate. After all, Jesus went through a lot in his life, especially in the days leading up to his crucifixion. He’s entitled to a final cry of relief! This interpretation is authentic to scripture, and it is authentic to our own lived experience.

Fine.

What else? You see, we know that John in his Gospel is interested in far more than a simple rendering of history. He says in chapter 20, “These things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” So John does have an agenda, and that agenda may well influence his inclusion of this sentence, It is finished.

We also know that this Gospel is the only Gospel to include this sentence, It is finished, which is interesting. It makes us think, What else is peculiar to this Gospel? Might there be connections between these pecularities?

Well, this is also the only Gospel that begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

So we have “In the beginning . . .”

And then later our sentence: “It is finished.”

In the Book of Genesis, we read “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and we also read, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done.”

John appears to be retelling the creation story with his own spin on it. This is the new creation, John is saying, brought to us in Jesus, the Word.

Just as earthly life came into being with the creation story in Genesis, eternal life comes into being with the Jesus story in John.

In John, Jesus says over and over again in one form or another: “Believe in me, and you will have eternal life.”

In Jesus is life.

So I want to suggest that when Jesus says, “It is finished,” at least one of the things he is referring to is death. Death is done, and not just eternal death, but living death. Not just the spectre of an endless death when our days on this earth have come to an end, but also anything that is deathly in our lives or in our world today. On Calvary, Jesus dealt finally and completely with death.

And though we see death all around us, in the news from Africa and the Middle East, in our friends who are struggling with deadly addictions, in the deathly experience of divorce, in the experience of heartbreak when a lover leaves, in the living death of stress and anxiety, and on and on, we know ultimately all the death-dealing powers of the world will come to an end. It’s hard to believe, perhaps, but that is what John is telling us.

Jesus finished death, which is why John Donne can say, “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
. . .
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!

It’s strange to think that in death Jesus defeated death. The crucifixion is indeed a dark triumph.

It’s also strange to receive comfort from his death—to know that as our Savior hung from that tree, sputtering his last words, letting out his final breaths of air, he was bringing life to all of us, you, me, the whole world.

But that is just how our God is. Paradoxical. Strange. Wondrous.