Good Friday 2014
Lent will be over in a couple days, so I’ll take my last real chance to confess. I confess that I like control. And I bet you do to. I especially like remote controls. I’ve got one for my television and one for my iPod dock. Another for my DirecTV satellite DVR. Another for the surround sound system. And I’ve got a controller for my Nintendo Wii gaming system. And that’s just the start of it.
I control my communications with my
smart phone. And I really want one of those thermostats that I can control with
my phone. I have an iPad with an app that I can use to control my DirecTV satellite
DVR from this very pulpit. And then there’s my Facebook account that I use to
control my image in the world through carefully-wrought posts and clever bon
mots, pictures revealing my travel and dining experiences (none of them with my
hair in disarray), and the obligatory selfie or two. I can use my various
hand-held electronica to download an eBook or audio book, or even a batch of
non-perishable groceries. Such a world do I live in that with a swipe of my
finger I control the light passing through fiber optic cable and get what I
want, when I want it. And when do I want it? Now.
All of which makes the Old Sinner in me shudder when I hear Jesus’ last words on the cross in John’s gospel. Just before he breathes his last breath, he says, “It is finished.” In the other three gospels, Jesus’ death is random and chaotic, an out-and-out disaster. Jesus tumbles head-long into ignominious defeat at the hands of all the religious folks in Jerusalem. But in John’s gospel, Jesus is in complete control. “It is finished.” If he could pull his hands off the cross to do it, he brush them off, saying, “Spick-spack. There. I’ve done it.” “It is finished” means it’s accomplished and complete, and none of it happened in a way Jesus didn’t intend.
Which shouldn’t surprise you one whit. He warned you this was the way it was going to go. Half-way through John’s gospel, Jesus tells his followers that he’s the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. That’s not passive. His life isn’t taken for his sheep. It’s an active thing. He lays it down, and he says, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again” (John 10:17-18). Do you hear what he’s saying? He demands control. You don’t get to yank him around to serve your own purposes, no matter how noble, kind, or good. He has come to complete his task of sheep-saving, and he will have it. He’s going to git ‘er done, no matter what. And when he claims that authority, the religious people around him murmur that Jesus is possessed by a demon.
That’s just the tip of the control iceberg that God has been floating through the world’s history, though. Back in the days of Deuteronomy, God told the Israelites, “I kill that I might make alive.” And a little earlier in the story of those chosen people, Moses sees God in a burning bush. God tells him he’s sending him to free his people from slavery in Egypt. When Moses asks God for his name so he can tell Pharaoh who sent him, God says his name is Yahweh. That means, “I am what I am” or “I will be what I will be” or “What you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis? I’m in control!”
When God finally can’t wait a moment longer, at the right time, he takes on flesh in order to be what he will be: the Good Shepherd, the Vine, the Gate, the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, Emmanuel – God-with-us – and Savior, King, High Priest, and Lord. Jesus will be what he will be. And what he will be, whether you like it or not, is your Lord, and the Lord of all the hurting, sick and sorrowful, and even the Lord of his enemies.
And we human creatures? What do we do when God shows up in the person of Jesus? Oh yes, we’ll sing hosannas and wave palm branches as long as he rides in as our own chosen royalty. But as soon as he asserts his power and control, we’ll scream bloody murder about losing our control. In fact, we call him demon-possessed at best, and at worst nail him to a cross, hanging him to die there, mocked by the crowds, and breathing his last as a sinner executed between two thieves. Control? We give it our best shot on Calvary. We go postal on Golgotha. We seek his death at the Place of the Skull. Rather than give up our control, we’d rather kill off the God who kills and makes alive. That making alive business we don’t so much trust, and we’re scared spitless of God’s angel of death. We take control, or at least we think we do. We brush off our hands, saying, “Spick, spack. There now. We’ve done it. We don’t have to bother with that scoundrel anymore. He’s finished.”
He’s finished, that much is sure. But rather than our offing him and insuring our lifelong self-continuity project, Jesus declares that he’s been in control all along. “It is finished,” he says, and breathes his last. He knew what was coming. He knows how sin works. He’s got you nailed down to your last bit of corner-cutting, deception, and autonomy. It’s all done. Jesus will be who Jesus will be. He is the Word who was there at the beginning. He pitched camp among us. And his own rejected him. Jesus death looks like defeat and disaster, but Jesus sees what we can’t. The whole blamed sinful project of ours is over and done with.
No longer is God’s judgment on you determined by the Law, as if you could ever have fulfilled God’s demands in the way God desires. Your attachment to eye-for-an-eye justice is now thrown in the dustbin of history. Your constant judgment of others based on your untrained eye and chomping down on the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, has no place here. And when you get paid the wages of your sin, death will have no more power.
You think you may have dealt a death-blow to the threat of Jesus, but now Jesus has finished it all off. He goes down into the depths of death, into the place of your demons, into the grave of your good intentions, religious activity, and righteous deeds, into the whitewashed sepulcher you’ve constructed for yourself. And he asserts that he has control over things even here. “It is finished. Done. Complete. You kill me, but when you do it, that just gives me a chance to take control even there.” No one can take his life from him. He lays it down of his accord.
“It is finished” means that now he he’s got control in spades, a royal flush of them. And the one single thing that’s certain about you – your death – he makes into the gate to eternal life. To the old sinner in you, he remains the greatest threat you could face. But for the beat-up, the broken-down, and the bedeviled he’s complete good news. On the cross he becomes the Lord of sinners, the godless, and the unrighteous. Jesus heals the sick and lifts up the downtrodden. He goes to the hungry to feed them. He goes to the thirsty to give them drink. He visits the imprisoned and clothes the naked. He goes to your rough patches, and self-dug holes to bring his mercy to you. Even in death and the depths of hell he proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord.
When your last breath comes and the forces of time or illness or the physics of an object in motion staying in motion until acted upon by another object or force end you in an accident, you, too, will be finished off. Yet though the sin of all humanity, you included, sought Jesus’ end, he will not let that be the last word on you. For he’s done all that needs to be done. “It is finished.” He has performed every good deed required of you by God. Say it with me: “It is finished.” He fulfilled the Law and gives you his righteousness. “It is finished.” He provides you with the full measure of a life free from sin. “It is finished.” He’s taken it all: the entire messed-up, random disaster of your attempts at sustaining yourself, and wrapped himself up in it like grave clothes.
Before you have a chance to object or cobble together excuses or file a plea for leniency, he will come to give you what he’s accomplished: your salvation and eternal life. When he does, you might not even recognize that it’s happened. Life might look exactly like it did before. The guards in front of his tomb stand there guarding, never suspecting that behind their backs, behind the stone obscuring the tomb, literally everything has changed. And when Mary encounters the finished, resurrected Jesus there on Sunday morning, she doesn’t understand what’s happened to the point of not recognizing Jesus. Everything is different, because it's now finished.
And how about you? You will recognize him. He has laid down his life for you. You have not taken it from him. He’s done it of his own accord, you wandering sheep. And when he calls you out of your grave, like the rest of his sheep you’ll know his voice. And you’ll say, “Baa-baa, Jesus. Thank God you’ve taken control and finished it all. Thank you for finishing off the sin and death I’ve suffered under my whole life. Here I am. Have at me with your resurrecting power and judgment of mercy.” When he comes on the Last Day to speak your name, you will say, “I thought you’d never get here, but now I can breathe at last. It is finished.” Amen.
