“He said, ‘It is finished.’
Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
St. John 19:30
Today is the twenty-fifth of
March. That, in itself, may seem rather
unremarkable to you. The dates for the
celebration of these great three days of Holy Week change from year to year,
depending on the cycles of the moon. We
last kept Good Friday on March 25 eleven years ago, and it will next be on this
date in 2157, when we will have all gone to our reward.
But it may be that the first Good
Friday was also on the 25th of March, and as they say, thereby hangs
a tale.
If you know your liturgical calendar
really well, you will remember that when Holy Week and Easter Week don’t
interfere, we celebrate another festival on this date, March 25, the Feast of
the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary, and God
sent His Son into the world to save us.
Christmas is exactly nine months from today. This is a day of the great end, but also of
the great beginning. He came on this day
to save us, and this day He announced His work was done. The
life of Christ is a perfect circle.
The
great Anglican poet John Donne, back in 1608, when once again Good Friday fell
on March 25 explained it this way:
This
day hath shown,
The
abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one…
Of
the Angels’ Ave and Consummatum est.
Ave—Hail, O favored one, and Consummatum est—it is finished.
There was a legend in ancient times,
known among both Jews and pagans that great heroes, people who truly changed
the course of history, were born and died on the same day. It was so, the rabbis said, for Moses and
many of the great prophets, and for some of the great Roman heroes as well. There were also similar legends surrounding
the particular season of the Passover, which began, Saint John tells us, on the
evening of Christ’s death. This was the
day when God set his people free from slavery in Egypt. But it was also then that the world was made,
that Noah and his family emerged from the ark, that Abraham lifted the knife
over Isaac his Son. This is a day heavy
with symbolic meaning, with resonances that sound across the long story of God’s
faithful love for the world He had made.
As I say, it’s an old legend,
recounted by many of the early Christian writers as evidence for the truth and
significance of this day, of this death and the Man who perished on it. Many medieval paintings reference it, juxtaposing the two scenes of Mary's encounter with the angel and Christ's death on the Cross.
It’s not the kind of argument we modern
people generally find convincing. Though
I suspect that many of us, if we’re really honest, do watch for the odd coincidences
in the run our lives, those dates when events seem connected, giving deeper
meaning to both. When a baby comes on
day his great-grandmother died, we’ll note it with wonder. A letter arriving on an anniversary, a phone
call arriving at a most surprising time.
We watch for these things, they make us sit up and take notice.
Because what they might reveal is
purpose. They allow us to pull together
the raveled string that is so much of the life we live. They point to a deep consistency in the
course of things, a consistency fixed in time itself. If we are people of faith, they are more than
coincidence. They deepen our trust that
God is good, that He who acts in the small happenings of life will be faithful
to bring all things to their long-promised fulfillment.
This day, this good Friday, can
appear an unexpected disaster, an occasion where purpose and pattern seem
impossible to trace. It certainly seemed
so to the apostles, who spent the day hiding in fear. It seemed so, perhaps, to Pilate, who saw
before His tribunal a man who simply refused to play by the rules, who would
not cower, beg, or cut a deal. It seemed
so to the religious leaders, who rush about, trying every means they know to force
the result that just might slip from their grasp. They think they have a plan, but clearly they’re
trying too hard, nervous that it all may go badly wrong at any moment.
It’s only Jesus who seems to know
what’s really happening. This is among
the deepest themes of Saint John’s telling of the passion story. Jesus is completely in control. He keeps silence mostly. His words are carefully chosen. There are no protests or complaints. “He poured out himself to death”—that’s what
Isaiah had prophesied generations before.
And here we see it, moment by moment.
He poured himself out slowly,
with intent, until He spoke the last word, “It is finished.”
This was the long-determined plan,
that the Son should offer His life, that the righteous One, by His blood would
make many righteous. This plan of
reconciliation, Saint Peter testified, was determined before the world was ever
made.[1] In the Book of Revelation, Christ is praised
as the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world. [2]
For the joy set before him, the author of Hebrews proclaimed, “He endured the
Cross, despising its shame.”[3] Everyone else, perhaps, had forgotten the
significance of this day, how what He does this day completes the annunciation’s
miracle. Everyone else failed to see how
the whole history of salvation led up Calvary’s hill to this moment of
reckoning.
Perhaps
only his holy mother also remembered, and this is part of why she takes her
place beneath his Cross. Mary watches
her own life coming full circle, her greatest joy swallowed in bitter
sorrow. And yet, there had been warnings
that it would come to this. She does not
join the mob that bids him show his power and come down. This was His hour, the culmination of what
was promised by the angel so long before.
The angel had promised that He would be the Son of God, the Savior of
His people, that He would rule a kingdom that endured forever. And this is how He must do it. This day, the sword pierces her own heart, as
the prophet had foretold, but in this piercing of His body, life for the world
flows forth.
In
one sense, the death of Christ is a failure: a travesty of justice, an unveiling
of the bitterness of the soul, a rejection of God’s love so freely offered. But it is also the reaching of a goal, the
setting right of a world so badly off course, the return of all that was lost,
the bridging of the great gulf fixed between the Holy One and a world of
sinners. It is finished, He says—for this
moment Mary said yes to the angel’s glorious words. For this moment, He was made, and in it all His
life’s work is gathered up and laid before the Father in triumph.
“Through
him,” Isaiah promised, “the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; The
righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their
iniquities.”
We
are people who say, but very rarely ‘it is finished.’ There is so little that is resolved in our
lives, so little that we know clearly and beyond a shadow of doubt. Our motivations are mixed, our repentance
not quite so earnest as we would have it be.
We cannot make ourselves righteous.
We do not carry our own light. We
cannot bear our iniquities.
Which
is why on this day of all days, we rejoice that “it is finished.”
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