Almighty God, look with mercy on your family for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed and to be given over to the hands of sinners and to suffer death on the cross. Be not against us, we beg, but forever remain for us, continually bringing your salvation to bear in our midst. Through Christ we pray, who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
We have followed Jesus over the last few weeks in the hopes of being able to touch, to be touched by his holiness just a little bit more. We have brought our struggles with us, our concerns and our questions. And we have finally reached the moment of truth. And what we get is a sentence: "It is finished."
Throughout his life, Jesus has brought healing to the sick, food to the hungry, wisdom to the foolish. He has walked all this way, gotten into many a verbal scuffle, been abused physically and mentally. And all so that he can utter that phrase with complete integrity: "It is finished."
What odd words.
As I read them in preparation for this evening, I was suddenly struck by a question, a rather simple question, perhaps one so simple that it easily flies under our radar of awareness, but an important question nonetheless…
What is "it"?
What is the "it" that is finished? What is Jesus talking about?
One of the nice things about being Christians in community is that we can share our questions and help each other come up with some answer. We have 2000 years of wonderful theological works on which we can draw to find some of our answers. Theologians are quite gifted in what they do. They've devised some dandies of words out there to talk about what the "it" is that was finished in Jesus on the cross, to talk about this thing (the "it") we can call "salvation." A whole vocabulary exists out there to talk about this great divine plan of salvation. I'm sure you've heard many, if not all of these words before: Forgiveness, grace, reconciliation, election, predestination, free will, liberation. It's a wonderful vocabulary. Very heady stuff.
But it all also makes me wonder: does it really have to be that hard? To understand this thing called salvation, do we have to step ourselves in piles and piles of books? Isn't there an easier way, a more accessible way, to uncover what "it" is?
First of all, I want to say that I think it is a mistake to try to figure out what "it" is, what salvation is, without asking what is it for. What is salvation for? And the simplest answer I can come up with is: it is for us. God is Love. Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, of God. And everything that Jesus did was done in the Love of God for us.
"It is finished" is what Jesus said within earshot of his mother, the two Marys, and his beloved disciple, because "it" is for them. "It" is for Peter, who is nowhere to be found. "It" is for Caiaphas, who condemned him for blasphemy. "It" is for Pilate, who executed him as a rebel.
"It" is for us, because ultimately, God is for us. That's the simplest answer I can come up with regarding what salvation is for. But, simple as it may be, it actually makes the task of finding out what salvation itself is much more complicated. What is "it"?
Well, I think that maybe "it" is different for different people. What it "it" for those who love him and stand at the foot of the cross. Maybe for them salvation is having someone to cling to in the hour of their greatest pain, to be able to "belong" to one another, having someone to be there for them at that moment.
What is "it" for Peter? Maybe for him, right now, it is knowing he will never have to live in that shame of his betrayal ever again.
What is "it" for Caiaphas and Pilate? Maybe, it's their someday coming to understand that the justice that Jesus proclaimed was for them as much as it was for those whom they oppressed.
Maybe. Maybe those are some possibilities of what "it" was for those people at that time. But I can't say for sure. All I can say ultimately is that "it is finished," whatever that means for them. Whatever it means for them, only they can answer that.