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A WORD OF VICTORY

Echoes from Calvary, Part 6

April 1, 2007 – Palm/Passion Sunday

Pastor Bob Sanders

For Jesus the end draws near.  His broken body can’t endure much more.  He’s been punched and flogged and nailed to a cross where he’s hung for over three hours.  After that much trauma, vital systems begin to shut down.  His great heart will soon stop beating.  The Lord of life is dying.  As the Creed puts it, he “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.” Last week we heard a word of that suffering as from his parched lips he cried, “I thirst!”  And this morning our Scripture reading begins there and continues on, as we hear our Lord’s sixth word from the cross – and strangely enough, it’s a word of victory.

John 19:28-30

28After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” 29A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. 30When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

What Is “It”?

“It is finished.”  That’s the word from the cross we have to consider on this Palm Sunday.  Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor tells about the time she was a hospital chaplain and her supervisor told her the best way to get a patient to talk was to sit down in the room, settle back like you’re going to stay for a while, and say,

“Tell me about it.”

“Tell me about what?” she wanted to know, and the supervisor said, “That’s the point.  You don’t know yet, so don’t pretend like you do.  Just say, ‘Tell me about it,’ and the other person will let you now what ‘it’ is.” 1

“It is finished,” says Jesus.  But what is “it,” exactly?  Well, the dying, for one thing – the excruciating agony, the prolonged suffering.  They didn’t use lethal injection back then to carry out an execution.  There was no desire to make it less painful, since that would lessen its value as a deterrent.  The whole point of a cross was to make it hurt as much and for as long as possible, and over the years the Romans had become quite good at it.  Medical experts who’ve studied crucifixion say that Jesus probably died of suffocation, as his arms gave out and his lungs collapsed under the weight of his hanging body.  Blood loss is another possibility.  Heartbreak is a third.  Whatever it was, Jesus could see it coming, and that’s when he spoke these words.

But it’s important to see that this is not a word of defeat or surrender.  Jesus isn’t saying, “It’s over.  I give up.”  No, in the Greek his words literally mean, “It is completed” or even, “It is perfected.”  It’s a word of triumph, a word of victory, a word of achievement – the word Michelangelo uttered when he put his last touch of paint on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  Despite the bloody soldiers and the cynical religious leaders, despite the jeering crowds and the defeated disciples, Jesus has succeeded.  He has accomplished the work he came to do.  Earlier in John’s Gospel Jesus’ disciples ask him why he hasn’t eaten, and he tells them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” 2  And now, just before death closes in, he announces that is precisely what he has done: completed that work.  “It is finished.” 

The Mission of God

I often recall something a veteran pastor told me back when I was starting my ministry.  I’d asked him what for him was the toughest part about being a pastor, and he said, “It’s the fact that my work is never finished.  No matter how many hours I put in, there’s always one more sermon to be written, one more meeting to conduct, one more hurting person to be counseled.” 

“So what do you do about it?” I asked him, and that’s when he told me the secret to his long career as a clergyman.  He washed his car.  Every Monday he got the hose, filled a bucket with soapy water, and washed off all the dirt and grime.  And when it was done, he knew it.  No matter how bad last Sunday’s sermon had been or how many needy people were waiting for him, he had this brief shining moment on Monday when something was actually accomplished: his car was clean and he could say, “It is finished.” 

On Good Friday something great is finished, accomplished – a work that Jesus at first hesitated to take on.  On Thursday night he prayed in Gethsemane that this cup might pass.  He did not want to go through what the cross would cost him – the agony of body and heart and soul we talked about a couple weeks ago.  He knew that going to the cross meant taking on the sin of the whole world, and that meant being separated from his heavenly Father – something Jesus the Son had never experienced.  “Father,” he prayed, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” 3

When it became clear to him that this was what the Father wanted, when he saw that this terrible suffering was what it took to accomplish his mission, Jesus did it.  He lifted that deadly cup to his lips and drank it to the dregs.  He went to the cross and took on its suffering and shame.  Not because he had to, but because he chose to.  In John 10 Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. . . . And I lay down my life for the sheep. . . . No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.  I have received this command from my Father” 4  Jesus laid down his life for us.  No one took it from him.  No one forced him.  In selfless love he chose the cross.

Friends, if you don’t remember anything else about this word from the cross, please remember this.  Jesus did not die in frustration and failure.  He didn’t say, “I am finished.”  He said, “It is finished.”  The work he came to do, the mission he came to fulfill – is now fully completed.  We look at the cross and what we see is the blood and the horror, the defeat and the death.  But something grand and glorious is being worked out on that cross.  The mission of God.  The redemption of the human race.  The salvation of the entire world.  It’s not a cry of resignation or defeat.  It’s a cry of victory.  “It” – the work he came to accomplish, the salvation he came to bring – “it is finished!”

What a Savior!

But you’ve got to see this for yourself.  You’ve got to see this work as something done for you.  You’ve got to see that salvation isn’t a matter of your doing something for God.  It’s first and foremost a matter of letting God do something for you.  Something you desperately need.  Something only God can give.  Only God can send his Son to pay the price for your sins.  Only the spotless Lamb of God can make a perfect atonement.  Only Jesus on the cross can say, “It is finished.”  All you and I can do is fall on our knees in grateful wonder.  As the quote from Will Willimon on the cover of your bulletin says,

He has done what we could not do.  Because we could not get to God, God climbed down to us…descended to our level.  God has finished what God began.  The battle is done.  The war is won.  The debt is paid.  It is finished. 5

You have to see this.  Your eternal destiny depends on it, and some of you still don’t get it.  Some of you think Jesus is a great moral teacher, but you haven’t accepted him as your Savior.  You think the reason Jesus came was to give you an example – a moral standard you’re supposed to live up to.  You think that Jesus came to earth to say, “Here’s the way you should live.  Follow my example.  Pursue peace and justice.  Be a good person.  Do these and you’ll be saved.” 

But that’s not what the cross says.  The cross says what you need is not a good example.  The cross says what you need is a Savior.  There on the cross we see Jesus not as moral teacher, but as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  He didn’t come to give us a set of steps to work our way to God.  He came to lay down his life for us.  That was his mission: to die for us. 

But this is why so many people have a hard time with the cross.  People have a hard time because the cross says something we’d rather not hear.  The cross says, “Listen.  You need to know this.  You need to know you are so lost and you are so helpless that only the death of the Son of God will save you.  And you need to know that you are so infinitely loved that He’s willing to do that for you.  Watch him there on the cross as he takes what you deserve.”  And unless you see this, unless you see Jesus on the cross for you – not a moral example but an atoning Savior – then he will never be a transforming presence in your life.

I grow so weary of those who say, “Well, I believe in Jesus – not as my Savior, but Jesus the teacher of love.  I believe in a Jesus who says, ‘I love everyone just the way they are’ and who teaches us to say, ‘I love you just the way you are.’”  But that’s not adequate, not according to the New Testament.  When you say something like that you’re making absolute nonsense of what happened on Good Friday because, as one preacher puts it, “Why in the world would anyone want to execute Mr. Rogers?” 6 

Now, I loved Fred Rogers (he was a Presbyterian minister, for heaven’s sake).  And of course I affirm that wonderful message he had for children on his TV shows: “I love you just the way you are.”  But you cannot, you dare not reduce Jesus Christ to a first-century Mr. Rogers.  If that’s all he is to you, then the cross means nothing to you.  You’ll never understand the depth and wonder of the love of God.  You’ll never marvel at it, never weep over it.  You’ll never tremble in awe when you hear him say, “It is finished.”  And you’ll never be changed.

But when you see the cross and grasp what happened there, when you see Jesus Christ choosing to lay down his life for you, you begin to realize, “I need more than a good example.  I need a Savior.  I don’t need advice on how to be a nicer person.  I need grace and nothing but grace.”  And when you see that, you’re about to get changed.  What Jesus finishes on the cross becomes yours, and you begin to understand the words we sang a moment ago:

Guilty, vile, and helpless we, spotless Lamb of God was He;

Full atonement!  Can it be?  Hallelujah, what a Savior!

Earn This

Let me try to say this another way.  Most of us remember the movie from about 10 years ago called “Saving Private Ryan.”  It’s one of my favorite films, but it’s really hard to sit through.  For the first thirty or so minutes, you watch as the first American soldiers hit the beaches at Normandy on D-Day and this carnage of combat engulfs you – men fighting and dying, men screaming in fear and pain, men drowning, blown apart, ripped open.  It’s brutal and shattering, and then you realize the real thing went on not just for thirty minutes but for hours and hours – truly, “the longest day.” 

But the film’s real story begins shortly after D-Day.  The U.S. War Department discovers that three of the four sons of the Ryan family in Nebraska have been killed in the same week.  Orders are given that the last one, Private Ryan, is to be found and sent home immediately to his grieving mother.  A team of American soldiers set out to find him, and finally catch up with him on the front lines.  But before they can get away, they are caught in a fierce counterattack by the German army.  In the fighting that follows, most of the soldiers sent to save Private Ryan are killed, including the captain of the unit (played by Tom Hanks).  As he is dying, the captain pulls young Private Ryan near to him and with his final breath whispers two words: “Earn this.”

And that seems to be film’s message to you and me.  Earn this.  Your life has been saved by the sacrifice of others.  Earn this.  You can go on living in freedom because they laid down their lives.  Earn this.

The final scene takes place in the present.  We watch Private Ryan, now well into his 80s, visiting the military cemetery at Normandy, accompanied by his wife, his grown children, and his grandchildren.  He finds the cross that marks the grave of the captain who died to save him, and he kneels down before it.  Tears stream down his face as he desperately asks his wife, “I’ve lived a good life, haven’t I?  Tell me I’ve been a good man.”

She doesn’t understand.  But we do.  Can he ever deserve what was done for him?  Can he ever be good enough?  Will he ever be able to say he’s done what it takes to “earn this”? 

As a pastor, I hear a similar cry again and again.  I hear it in homes and hospital rooms, in meetings and especially in memorial services.  This uncertainty, this fear.  This desperate cry: “Tell me, pastor.  Tell me I’ve been a good man, a good woman.”

It comes when we fail to hear this word of victory from the cross.  It comes when we think all Jesus did was give us a moral example, something we’re supposed to live up to.  It comes when we think we have to earn our salvation, live up to a certain standard, achieve a certain score.  The eldest and wisest among us have discovered we’ll never get there.  We’ll never be good enough.  Not to deserve what Jesus did.  Never.  But that’s the whole point.

The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus didn’t come to be just a religious teacher or moral example.  Jesus didn’t come to say, “Here are the steps you must follow to be good enough.”  No, Jesus came to save you, and that means he came to die for you, to pay the penalty for your sins so you can be reconciled to God.  To be not just your example but your Savior.  You have to see this.  If you don’t, if you don’t take in he did for you, then you wind up like the aged Private Ryan, staring at the cross and wondering fearfully, “Was I good enough?” 

Dear friends, our Lord’s dying words from the cross were not, “Earn this,” but rather, “It is finished.”  He did it.  He paid the price.  There’s nothing you have to do to earn it.  There’s nothing you can do to earn it.  All you have to do is accept it.  Accept the fact that you need what he did for you on the cross.  Accept the fact that he loved you enough to do it – to lay down his life.  Accept it, his finished work on the cross, and you will be saved.

1. Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way (Cowley, 1999), p.103.
2. John 4:34.
3. Matthew 26:39.
4. John 10:15-18 (italics mine).
5. William H. Willimon, Thank God It’s Friday (Abingdon, 2006), pp.65ff.
6. Dr. Timothy J. Keller in a sermon entitled “Who Is the Real Jesus?” as preached on September 8, 1996 to Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, New York.