This evening, we bring our sermon series on “the Last Seven Words of Christ from the Cross” to its triumphant conclusion.    However, I have to begin with a confession.  I’ve always felt conflicted about these last words of Christ because I could never be sure whether they were an expression of ULTIMATE VICTORY or a cry of UTTER DEFEAT, especially in light of Christ’s EARLIER lament, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”  The distinction is CRUCIAL for it not only can alter our picture of Jesus on that cross but ALSO our understanding of God and how God RELATES to us.  Like the good Calvinist that I am, there was a time I was firmly convinced that those last two words were a declaration of resignation and surrender, a cry of hopelessness and despair.  As the sins of the entire world—past, present, and future--were being laid upon him, he could no longer confront his God as his loving Father but rather as a severe and righteous Judge.  Thus when he cried out, “It is finished!” he was declaring that HE was finished, that his life and his relationship to his God had now come to a tragic and miserable end.  Sin had robbed him of his faith, his courage, and even his HOPE, and so his cry of “It is finished” really becomes, “Woe is me for I am finished!” at least, that’s how I understood it at the time.

If we conclude that Jesus’ sixth word from the cross--“It is finished”-- is a cry of tragic resignation, then the seventh and last word must be interpreted the SAME WAY.  Therefore when he cries out with his final breath, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit,” rather than construing this as Jesus saying that his work was finally finished and he could now look forward to the safety and comfort of the Father’s bosom, it would imply just the OPPOSITE.  With the world’s sin weighing down upon him, he now submits himself into the hands of a righteous and holy Judge.  His cry then becomes an extraordinary appeal for the indulgence of the court: “God, my life is now in your hands to do as you see fit.  Lord, please be merciful to me- a sinner!”  As a result, instead of being embraced as an OBEDIENT SON, God is forced to scorn and despise him as the ULTIMATE LAW-BREAKER, as the world’s SIN-BEARER since God’s holiness demands that Jesus MUST be punished for carrying our sin. 

However, after much reflection, I’ve since come to the OPPOSITE conclusion, that his final moments on that cross were NOT filled with resignation and doom but rather with JOY and TRIUMPH!  The problem with the interpretation I’ve just laid out is that where it is true that God is both a LOVING and JUST God, THIS view states that God’s demand for justice TRUMPS or OVERWHELMS God’s love.  The narrative goes like this, that God loves Jesus—his Only-begotten Son--up until he is nailed to that cross and he takes upon himself the world’s sin.  Because sin represents a rejection of God and a violation of his holy nature, it cannot exist in God’s presence so it must be judged and destroyed.  Because on that cross, Jesus becomes the embodiment of the world’s sin, he must therefore be rejected and killed.  Only after Jesus is dead and the world’s sin has finally been dealt with can God reclaim his love for his son.  That becomes evident when Christ is raised from the dead three days later.  God’s wrath against sin is thus satisfied by an ultimate sacrifice—the death of his Son, the Man-God, upon that cross--which God demands in order to love us and restore us back into fellowship with himself.  For Protestants, this has remained the prevailing view of Christ’s death and sacrifice for the past nine hundred years. 

The problem, as I see it NOW, is THIS- that if God, as his Heavenly Father, is SO concerned with justice and punishment that he ends up sacrificing his own child in order to deal with the world’s sin, then how can WE ever trust that this God will still love US when WE sin as we ALL do and will CONTINUE to.  If God’s love takes a backseat to God’s stern sense of justice, then we will always find ourselves looking over our shoulder in the event we’ve transgressed or broken a rule of his.  As one scholar has described it, it’s kind of like you’re relieved that your violent dad didn’t beat you THIS time, but what about the NEXT time?  Where’s the security one finds in an unconditional relationship of love and trust such as the relationship Jesus characterized in his parable of the Prodigal where the father loves and never STOPS anticipating the return of his son, REGARDLESS how callous and reckless that son may have been?  Besides, how can we say our sins are forgiven if Jesus is made to pay for it?  Think about it: if I loan you money and you can’t pay me back, but then I find someone else who CAN, I really didn’t forgive you anything- I just helped you pay it back.  That may be nice, but it’s not true FORGIVENESS.

            But there is yet ANOTHER way of viewing those last words of Christ so that instead of the cross being primarily an expression of God’s justice and anger towards sin with Jesus becoming the OBJECT of that wrath, it becomes the highest and greatest demonstration of God’s LOVE for us and the world.  When Jesus cried out from that cross, “It is finished,” it can be argued that that short exclamation became the most triumphant utterance ever to come from the mouth of any human being.  In the Greek, the sentence consists of just one word tetelestai meaning “to bring an end to,” “to complete,” “to accomplish.”  It signified the successful end to a particular course of action, the conclusion to that which one has set out to do. 

Of course, this raises the question of what exactly WAS finished?  Certainly his sufferings, just like his life, was coming to a quick end.  The cross was a method of punishment and death invented to inflict the greatest amount of suffering.  Hence, the pain that wracked his body from the beatings, the nails in his palms and feet, the crown of thorns over his brow, the dehydration from the hot noonday sun- all that was about to be mercifully halted.   Also ending was all the humiliation and scorn he received over the course of those six hours from the gawkers and the guards; no longer would he have to endure the curses and mockeries the people were directing at him.  Above ALL, what had finally come to an end was his divine mission which he was sent into the world to fulfill in the FIRST place.  Where every child comes into this world to live and fulfill its potential, Christ ALONE came into the world TO DIE that he might bring about our forgiveness and redemption.  Jesus had declared, “I lay down my life, and that I may take it again.  No one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself.  I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it again.  This commandment I received from my Father.”  It seems clear that when Jesus exclaimed, “It is finished,” he wasn’t referring to his LIFE being finished as he was the completion of a divine commission to fulfill the will and work of his Heavenly Father.

By his death on the cross, Jesus accomplished two things that only HE could have achieved- he revealed the limitless love the Father has for us; and he brought about our redemption, our reconciliation with a God who never gave up on us even when we had stopped caring about HIM.  Regarding the first point, it was on the cross that he showed us what TRUE love looks like.  As I said in my sermon on Jesus’s FIFTH Word from the Cross, “I thirst,” at the outset of his crucifixion, he was offered an anesthetic to help dull the pain and speed up the dying process.  Yet he deliberately refused it because he, who had experienced our LIFE to the fullest, now wanted to experience our DEATH in its all extremity AS WELL.  He who was Emmanuel or “God with us” at his birth was no LESS with us in his death so that he could immerse himself COMPLETELY in the “human condition”- identifying one hundred percent with the WORST of our pain, our suffering, and EVEN our death. 

In this way, we are assured that the Son can know all our joys but also our SORROWS, all our pleasures as well as our PAINS, all our victories and ESPECIALLY our DEFEATS.  Because we know that Jesus HAS experienced them all, we then can be certain that our GOD, our HEAVENLY FATHER, has experienced them all AS WELL, and that he will care for US and sustain US even during our darkest moments.  As St. Paul wrote the Corinthians, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (II Cor. 5:19).  Thus if God the Father was IN Christ the Son, then Christ’s sufferings are God’s sufferings TOO and HE experienced his death on the cross AS WELL, though in a different way from him.  Where Jesus suffered the physical and emotional toll that went with dying, God the Father suffered in and through the death of his Son.  Therefore, when the question is asked, “Where was God when Christ was hanging upon that tree?” the answer is an unequivocal, “He was PRESENT, all right- present in the person of his DYING SON.” 

But if Jesus demonstrates the fullness of God’s love by his total identification with us- in our death AS WELL as our life, we are repeatedly told that his was also a SACRIFICIAL love for the purpose of reconciling us with our Heavenly Father.  There are a number of scriptures that tie the death of Jesus to the Old Testament system of sacrifices such as, “God demonstrated his own love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” and “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,” and “herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”  However, in any reference of Christ as “the Lamb of God,” the one who takes away the sins of the world, there’s not the slightest indication that the wrath of God had to be appeased or that God’s attitude to sinners had to be changed from wrath and justice to love and mercy.  The original Passover story was never about trying to appease God’s anger but to remember God’s mercy and deliverance.  The WHOLE PURPOSE of the sin-offering in the Old Testament was RECONCILIATION, with God not desiring the DEATH of the sinner but rather his RESTORATION.  The same God who instituted the ritual of atonement is ALSO the same God who supplied the VICTIM even though it came at infinite cost to himself.  God provided the ram when Abraham intended to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mt. Moriah just as God offered his only-begotten Son Jesus on a hill outside Jerusalem called Calvary.  God ALWAYS takes the initiative of forgiving humanity and it is for the purpose of restoring us back into relationship with himself.  It is completely about God’s LOVE for us and not trying to appease his wrath because his holiness or righteousness had been injured or violated.  If God’s wrath is directed towards ANYTHING, it is always aimed at the SIN but NEVER at the sinner.

It is BECAUSE Jesus’ cry of “It is finished!” is NOT one of tragedy and defeat but rather of JOY and TRIUMPH that he can confidently say, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”  Rather than an exclamation of resignation and despair, it is then a prayer of HOPE and TRUST.  William Barclay, the great biblical commentator, has said of this verse:

Jesus died with a prayer on his lips, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”  That is Psalm 31:5 with one word added- Father.  That verse was the prayer every Jewish mother taught her child to say last thing at night.  Just as we were taught, maybe, to say, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” so the Jewish mother taught her child to say, before the threatening dark came down, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”  Jesus made it even more intimate, for he began it with the word Father.  Even on the cross, Jesus died like a child falling asleep in his father’s arms.

If Barclay is correct, then Jesus died, not with terror and defeat in his voice as I had previously supposed but with complete faith and confidence in the arms of his Heavenly Father.  If there is any doubt as to whether Jesus died in victory or defeat, this last word from the cross should put the entire matter to rest. 

But one LAST question remains, “what difference does it make whether Jesus died on that cross VICTORIOUSLY for having completed his Father’s mission, or IN DEFEAT for taking on the world’s sin and therefore being accursed of God?”  Well the truth is that while OUTWARDLY the cross may have been an utter DEFEAT, INWARDLY it was the ULTIMATE VICTORY.  The purpose of Christ going to his cross in the FIRST place was to become a brother to ALL OTHERS who may feel humiliated and forsaken THEMSELVES.   He lets them know that they have a comrade in Him as well as in his Heavenly Father- a God who understands their suffering and feels their pain at its greatest depth.  Of course, if it is TRUE that God loves us, then one can’t help but ask why this loving God, this Heavenly Father, allows his children to experience such hunger and thirst and privation, to endure the wars and diseases and terrible misfortunes that pervade history and fill our world in the FIRST place.  If God IS a “loving Father,” then why doesn’t he just prevent such tragedies from occurring AT ALL? 

The answer is that God expresses his love for us, NOT by supernatural means or the performing of miracles, and certainly NOT by insulating us from the horrors and difficulties that characterize life.  If that were the case, we would remain spiritual infants and NEVER mature.  Rather, God demonstrates his love through his SOLIDARITY with us- by SUFFERING with us.  As the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his prison cell only days before his execution for his involvement in the plot to kill Hitler, “Only the suffering God can help.”  Bonhoeffer was right for only a SUFFERING God can be a LOVING God and AS such, this God sides with the victims and sufferers EVERYWHERE- his solidarity with his own son on that cross as PROOF of that.  The GOOD news is that there is no amount of suffering that can ever cut us off from either his PRESENCE, his COMMITMENT, or his STEADFASTNESS to us.  By regarding that cross as the highest demonstration of his love for the world and NOT his WRATH or ANGER, we are then assured that he will NEVER turn his back on US--any more than he did to his own beloved son, JESUS—ESPECIALLY when we find ourselves having to bear our OWN cross down that same Via Dolorosa.  God CANNOT and WILL not ever abandon those he loves- not Jesus, not us, not ANYONE!  We are told that Catherine of Siena, one of the great saints of the church, once cried out: “My God and Lord, where were you when my heart was plunged in darkness and filth?” and she heard the reply, “My daughter, did you not feel it?  I was in your heart.”  Be assured that that SAME God loves YOU and is in YOUR heart this very night, and in the last day, in those final moments when death’s dark curtain is about to be drawn, you TOO will have the confidence to say EVEN AS OUR LORD DID, “Father, into your hands I JOYOUSLY commit my spirit.”  Amen.