30 March 2018 - Good Friday

Good Friday  — 30 March 2018

Trinity – 12:15 pm

Isaiah 52:13-53:12  |  Psalm 22  |  Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9  |  John 18:1-19:42

When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

“It is finished.” 

St. John’s Gospel is hard.  I don’t mean that it is too hard, that you should give up trying to read or understand it – very much the contrary!  But be aware that the evangelist, for all the relative simplicity of his common Greek, is a very sophisticated literary writer.  His words often have multiple meanings.  And the answer to the question, does he mean “A” or “B’? is likely to be “Yes.”

“It is finished.”  On the surface, what we may initially hear is:  “It’s all over.  It’s done.  That’s it.”  And that’s one of the meanings of the Greek word in the text.  But the phrase also means “It is completed.”  “It is done” as in “this project is now done.”  “It is accomplished.”  The underlying word also means “purpose,” as in “the purpose is fulfilled.”  Jesus is saying, “I have fulfilled the purpose for which I came, and now I can let go.”

(I might note that the same Greek word is used by St. Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Matt. 5:58]  That has given a lot of Christians palpitations, because we think that’s demand for a moral perfection in terms of keeping all the rules without fail, and I’m only human, give me a break!  That’s not the point.  “Be complete.”  “Be whole.”  “Be mature.”  “Fulfill God’s purpose for you.”  “Live in the image of the God who created you.”)

John’s Gospel goes on:  “Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”  I suppose the first thing that comes to our minds may be a picture of Jesus dropping his head and “giving up the ghost,” as the King James Version says.  “Breathed his last,” the synoptic gospels say, translating a word that can mean “expired.”  Okay.  But I think John means more than that.  The Greek says “He inclined his head.”  (In fact, the Greek word, through Latin, is where our word “incline” comes from.)  Jesus doesn’t just drop his head, he points his head.  One inclines to, points to something or someone.  Who was there, in the Fourth Gospel?  His mother, and the other women, and the Beloved Disciple.  The last of his faithful community, and the beginnings of his church.  “He inclined his head and gave up…”  Stop there.  The word means more than just “give up.”  It means “give over” or “hand on.”  It can mean “entrust.”  The root word is one we often translate as “tradition.”

Okay.  “He inclined his head and gave up – or handed on – his spirit.”  Except that’s not exactly what the text says.  It says, “He handed on the spirit.”  What spirit?  His own spirit, his soul, his breath?  Surrendered back to God the Father?  Yes, perhaps.  Or The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, handed over to the Church, gathered at the foot of his Cross?  As he will three days later, to his disciples in hiding:  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you…Receive the Holy Spirit.” [John 20:21-22] 

The author of the Fourth Gospel wants us to understand that Jesus was not a tragic victim who was foolish enough to let himself get caught by the Jerusalem Establishment and the Roman Empire?  It is quite clear in John’s Gospel that Jesus is the protagonist in his own Passion.  This is God’s drama, God’s mission, for the reconciliation, the healing, the completion, the perfection, the finishing of the human world.  Jesus’ earthly mission, the first act, is complete, it is finished, almost.  In the second act that mission has been handed over to us, in the power of the Spirit, to continue.