Good Friday Sermon – Sixth Word from the Cross –

“It is Finished.”
April 2, 2010
St. John’s Grace Episcopal Church
M. Bruce McKay
“Finishing the Work We’ve Been Given”
John 19:30a

 It’s been a very rich blessing being in this sanctuary, taking part in this service for the last 20 years.
 The stone walls that surround us – the stained glass – the cross draped in black and the extended time to be prayerful and meditative in the midst of a very busy week have always offered a welcome respite from both the outside world and the dominant values in our culture.
 Being in this space at this time on this day has put me (and perhaps you as well) in a place where I have at least a fighting chance of escaping the clutches of our culture. 
 We live in a culture that is constantly trying to convince us that our lives do in fact “consist in the abundance of our possessions.” (Luke 12:15b) – a culture that refuses to recognize what Art Buchwald understood when he said, “the most important things in life aren’t things.”
 We live in a culture that measures the net worth of human beings in terms of the difference between their assets and their liabilities – a culture that says what matters most is where you live, the car you drive, the clothes you wear and how much money you have in the bank.
 While many among us may not always agree with Marcus Borg, the Episcopal theologian, my hunch is that very few would argue with him when he says that the local gods in America – the idols created by our culture – are what he calls the 3 A’s – affluence, appearance and achievement.
Now which of these three local gods do you think connects best with this sixth word from the cross – “It is finished?”
The Greek word is telestai.  It means to complete something – to finish something.  Servants said, “It is finished,” when they completed the work they’d been given to do. 
In John’s Gospel Jesus uses this word telestai several times.
Once when his disciples were trying to get him to eat something, Jesus told them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work” (John 4:34).
In comparing himself to John the Baptist, Jesus referred to “the works that the Father has given me to complete…” (John 5:36).
During the Last Supper, Jesus offered a prayer in which he said to God, “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4).
This work involved turning water into wine, feeding 5,000 hungry people, offering living water to a Samaritan woman at a well, and opening the eyes of a man born blind. 
This work involved being the Good Shepherd, the True Vine, and the Bread of Life itself.
This work involved confronting the powers that be with a power not found in economic might or military superiority – a power not present in the abundance of our possessions.  
This work involved revealing the presence and power of God’s love in the world and inviting his followers to share in that love by loving one another as he loved them (John 13:34).
Hanging there on the cross Jesus said for the last time, “It is finished.” 
The servant had finished the work of his Master.  The child had completed the work entrusted to him by his heavenly parent.  Every item on any “to do” list that Jesus may have kept had been crossed off (No pun intended!).
How many here make lists of things to do?  Let’s see the hands.  I’m glad to see I’m not alone.  I can hold my own with anyone when it comes to “to do" lists.
I begin each day with a rather lengthy list of things to do – and confess to some significant sense of satisfaction when I’m able to cross something off the list - no matter how significant or insignificant the item may be.
Do you know what I mean? 
While writing a “to do” list can play an important role in our lives – especially as our bodies age and our memories fade, it’s possible to carry things too far.
I worked with a pastor in my prior parish whose wife was as faithful a Christian as I’ve ever known.  But she admitted at one point to being addicted to making lists of things to do.  As evidence of her addiction, she said that on more than one occasion, she’d written something on her list that she’d already done – just so she could have the satisfaction of crossing it off.
Where does this come from?  This compulsion to make lists so we can cross things off? 
While I can’t speak for this pastor’s wife, I can speak for myself.  There’s a part of me that feels like I’ve had a successful day if, at the end of it, most if not all of the things on my “to do” list are crossed off.
 While I haven’t succumbed to the temptation, I can see how enticing it would be to have a really successful day simply by writing down as many things as I could, including those things I’ve already done – just so I could see them crossed off when the day came to an end.
Making lists of things to do has something to do with wanting to make a success not just of our day but of our lives.  We want to feel like we’ve completed something – like we’ve accomplished something – like we’ve finished something  - like we’ve achieved something - and in that sense been successful.
Achievement becomes one of our local gods  - one of the idols in our lives – when we get addicted to crossing things off our “to do” list  - regardless of whether or not those items we’re crossing off have anything at all to do with living the life God created us to live.
One ancestor in our faith said that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive!” (Irenaeus)
 
Having said to God, during the Last Supper,  “I glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4) and then saying in this sixth word from the cross, “It is finished” Jesus brought to a close the life on earth he’d been entrusted to live.
Do you see why it’s been so important to me through the years to be here
at this time on this day?
Not only has it enabled me to at least temporally escape the clutches of a culture trying to get me to bow before the local god of achievement – to bow to the “to do” list that I faithfully create each day – it enables me to reflect on what it means for me to live my own life – and not the life of someone else.
As the poet, May Sarton writes:
Now I become myself.  It’s taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces.
(Opening Lines of Now I Become Myself by May Sarton quoted in A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer (p. 90-91)
 Who doesn’t know what it’s like to wear someone’s face – other than one’s own?
 Another poet, ee cummings, puts it this way:
 "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." (To Be Nobody But Yourself)
 Who doesn’t know what fighting this battle is like?
Who doesn’t know how hard it can be to finish the work that God has given you to do?
 That’s why being here at this time on this day is so important and why this sixth word from the cross that Jesus speaks is one we have to hear again, and again, and again.
 When Jesus says from the cross “it is finished,” he’s saying that his work is done, he’s completed what God had given him to do. 
In saying this, at the moment of his death, Jesus is making very clear that success, as it’s seen through the eyes of the world, was never on his list of things to do. 
As Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out, “…we live in a culture that adores success and that never seems to tire of raising the bar.  Being a successful human being means making straight A’s, keeping a well-paid job with good benefits, staying happily married to an attractive person, raising well-adjusted children, and not gaining too much weight.  Judging from the commercials on television, being successful also means driving the hot car, carrying a cool cell phone, having young-looking skin and choosing the right medicine to beat depression for good.”
Now most of us, most of the time, can say, that’s all a bunch of baloney.
And yet, most of us, most of the time, whether we keep “to do” lists or not, measure success in terms of being physically comfortable, financially secure, having long term relationships and a stable home life. 
Even though none of these things was true for Jesus, it’s with these measures of success in mind that we create lists of things to do in an effort to be valued for our achievements and in order to avoid being seen as a failure – a loser in the game of life.
And yet, there’s a part of us that knows full well that despite our best efforts losing can’t be avoided.  It’s that part of us that’s drawn to the plethora of reality TV shows.  Whether it’s Survivor, the Biggest Loser or the Apprentice what draws us to watch these shows is the fact that everyone loses – or almost everyone.  These shows are much more about losing than they are about winning.  Millions of Americans are drawn to watching them because at some level they’re still hoping that somehow the losers will only show up on the television screen and not in the mirror. 
In a culture that adores success and leaves all sorts of room to fail we have few places to turn to see people failing except reality TV and the reality of Jesus hanging there on the cross saying, “It is finished.”
At church, the loser shows up all the time, on the altar – or just above it. 
And we show up as well, with our “to do” lists in our pocket, or in our brief case, or in our Blackberry,  or in the back of our mind – wanting to be a success, and yet also wanting at the end, to say, “It is finished” – wanting to say that we have done the work God entrusted us to do us – wanting to say that we have completed what it means for us in our own life to love others as Jesus loves us. 
Doing this has nothing to do with being a success in the eyes of the world.
Doing this has nothing to do with gaining wisdom or power in the world’s eyes. 
As the Apostle Paul puts it: “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God…For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (I Corinthians 1:18, 25).  
It’s the foolishness and failure of the cross that shapes the “to do” list for us in our own lives as Christians and the “to do” list for us as the community called the church.
On this day that puts the cross at the center of our lives and our life together, I am reminded of the words of George MacLeod, the founder of the Iona Community off the west coast of Scotland. 
MacLeod writes:
“I simply argue that the Cross be raised again at the center of the market place as well as on the steeple of the Church.  I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a Cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on the town garbage heap, on a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew, Latin and Greek; at the kind of place where cynics talked smut, and thieves cursed, and soldiers gambled.  Because that is where He died and that is what He died about, that is where Church people should be and what Church people should be about.”
 
I was at a gathering of pastors a few years ago in Niagara Falls.  People were invited to speak about a time when they had seen the power of God at work in their church.  One pastor said it came recently in a time of testimony during worship.  A young woman stood up who’d been an addict for several years and said proudly, “This month I used my food stamps to buy food.”
With the cross at the center of our lives and our life together as the church we can’t help but admit that we are all addicted to the values of our culture.
 And we can’t help but admit that we all called to acknowledge our addiction, claim Christ as our higher power, and move beyond the walls of our buildings into places of addiction and alienation, poverty and fear, hopelessness and despair not because we want to be a successful congregation but because we want to complete the work God has given us to do!
 Because we want to say, when our days are done, “It is finished!”
This happens when we each find the grace and the courage to live the life God created us to live - doing the work God gave us to do.
In her poem The Journey, Mary Oliver writes:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though the melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,

determined to do
 the only thing you could do  –

determined to save
 the only life you could save.

Striding deeper and deeper into the world, listening to the One who said from the cross “It is finished,” we realize that in the end we only need one word - one word on our “to do” list.
And that word is love.
It was the love of God hanging there in the failure of the cross – a love more precious and powerful than any other force at work in the world.
Jesus finished his life as a failure in the eyes of the world because the only word on his “to do” list was love. 
May the same be said of us today and on that day when we too say, for the last time, “It is finished!”
Amen!
Note: This sermon draws on material in an article called, “Spectacular Failure” by Barbara Brown Taylor, in the February 22, 2005 edition of Christian Century.