Last Words from the Cross

John 19:28-30

Luke 23:44-46

Passion Sunday

April 9, 2006

INTRO

For more than a thousand years the Celtics have had a name for places or moments when you encounter an unusual spiritual presence. They call them “thin places” because they believe at that place, or in that moment, the separation between heaven and earth is very thin. The cross of Calvary is a “thin place.” Despite all the agony Christ suffered there, you can sense that at Calvary the door between this world and the next is opened a crack, and the distance between heaven and earth is very thin. So we gather at the cross again this morning, where Christ was hanging suspended between heaven and earth, and listen to Christ’s final words.

I. In two of the gospels, Calvary seems to be a thin place only because it’s a place of death. For Matthew and Mark, the only thing that seems to make Calvary a “thin place” is the fact that it’s the place where Jesus breathed His last breath. They both focus on the agony of Christ’s death. There’s no special sense of the presence of God at Calvary, so it’s a thin place only to the extent that every place where someone draws their last breath makes us aware we’re standing on the edge of eternity.

In fact, Matthew and Mark focus on the agony of Christ’s death. It’s not God’s presence, but His absence that is remarkable. The last discernible words of Christ, by Matthew and Mark’s accounts, were the haunting cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew and Mark both record those words, and both record that the cry of abandonment was followed by one last, inarticulate shout. We’re given no specific words, just a loud, anguished groan before Christ’s last breath is drawn. For the first two gospels, Christ died in great anguish. Not only physical pain, but a deep, “down to the core of your being” kind of anguish. It is the cry of one who feels abandoned by God.

But Luke and John remember it differently. Their memory is neither better nor worse; it’s just different. For Luke and John, Christ’s transition from this world to the next is less anguished, more serene. It’s not an indiscernible cry they remember, but specific words.

II. “It is finished!” Those are the last words John remembers hearing at the cross.

In His cry, Jesus never really tells us what IT is, and I can imagine some of the folks standing there wondering what those three words meant. What was finished? Were these the words of someone who is feeling overwhelmed, who finally realizes the battle is being lost? Are these words of despair?

If we knew nothing else about the life of Christ, except for hearing those three words, we might be led to believe that. But those words don’t just come from out of nowhere. They come near the end of John’s Gospel, which gives them a context, which gives us clues to understand their meaning. If we’ve followed John’s Gospel all the way through the life of Christ, we can know what He’s talking about.

When Christ shouts, “It is finished,” He is announcing that His mission on earth has been completed. The steady beat that reverberates through the whole life of Christ (in John’s Gospel) is the idea that He had been sent from the Father, He was devoted to the will of the Father, and that will would be accomplished when the time was right. From the moment of His first miracle in the gospel, at the wedding in Cana, the question lingering in the air was whether the time was right, if the time had come. Over and over again the message was that the time wasn’t right yet. “Not now. Not yet. The hour has not yet come.” Then came the day—the words we heard last week—the day when Christ announced, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).

Jesus has had time for those words to sink in; time to get as comfortable as He can with them, knowing they’re talking about His death. So when death finally comes, in John’s Gospel, the last words of Christ are a shout of triumph. It is finished! Mission accomplished! My task has been faithfully completed. Christ had come not only to do the will of the Father, but to reveal the love of the Father. And His triumphant cry proclaims that in His act of self-giving love, even there the Father has been made known.

III. Luke’s account is this. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). When He had said this, He breathed His last. Again, the scene is not despair, but serenity. Jesus spoke the words the minister usually speaks at the graveside service. We call it the committal. As one writer has commented, it’s as if Christ serves as rabbi at His own funeral. Committing His spirit back to whom? To the Father. Not in desperation, not in fear, but in assurance. His body may have been stripped, beaten, spit upon, mocked, and hung out to die, but even in the midst of all of those circumstances, His spirit belongs to God, His Father. And as Luke remembers Christ’s final words, they were words of faith, acknowledging the one to whom His life was entrusted.

We can talk about the resurrection being the defeat of the power and fear of death, and that’s true. But before the resurrection, before the assurance that God would win in the end, Christ models something else for us in His dying. His dying demonstrates His faith. He dies unafraid.

Christ’s resurrection is our hope, but we can say His death gives us hope as well. For He died as He lived: secure in the arms of the Father. It’s a rare thing these days for death to be faced with calmness. But part of our hope as Christians is to face death in different ways than the world faces death. “Death in our time means crisis. When someone dies and I’m called upon as a minister, I’m struck by the tone of ‘something awful has happened.’” But it need not be that way. Even before the resurrection, Jesus gave us hope in the face of death, showed us how to face death unafraid.

IV. The four gospels give us an interesting mix of accounts of the death of Christ. But this much all four gospels agree on. Calvary was the spot where Jesus breathed His last breath. At that place, on a Friday afternoon, Christ went through what we will all go through: the final beat of His heart, the final breath into His lungs, and then death came. And His death comes at one of the thin places in the world. A place, a moment when we sense the distance between heaven and earth is thin. And it’s in those places that we think about the real matters of life and death.

So often, in the season of Lent, by the time we reach this Sunday we’re already focused on Resurrection. We’re putting the finishing touches on the Easter music and drama, scheduling the Easter egg hunt, and coordinating the family’s Easter outfits. We have a Resurrection to celebrate! There’s no time to think about death!

But resurrection is always resurrection from the DEAD. And despite our culture’s aversion to talking about death, it’s the focus of the day. There is no resurrection without death. And remembering the death of Christ can be a moment to reflect on our own death. When we think with any seriousness about how we’ll die, we always end up back at the question of how we live.

Will we live with an awareness of God’s purpose for our lives? Will we be blessed by the peace that comes from knowing that our life’s work is done when we are done living our days? Or will there be a nagging sense of “unfinished business”? By the grace of God, may you be able to know “It is finished,” when your days come to an end. And may you commend your spirit to the Father with your final breath.