When my son, Ryan, was looking at colleges, we took a trip out to California to look at a few schools. We went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, and that was a bizarre experience. We were walking around the campus with some other parents and prospective students. A girl in one of the dorms stuck her head out the window and yelled, “Don’t come here; all the students are on drugs.” Fortunately, Ryan didn’t go there.
We ate lunch in Capitola, a little town just south of Santa Cruz. It was a little fish and chips place right on the ocean, called Stella’s. We sat outside, watching the surf. The salt air breezes tousled out hair. The sky was blue. The seagulls were lifting on the hot air currents billowing up from the warm sand, and then falling back to the beach or the water.
Suddenly a falcon swooped in and struck a seagull out of the air. The stunned seagull lay on the beach. The falcon landed on top of it and pinned it to the sand. The gull tried to fly away. The falcon kept its huge talons gripped around the seagull’s body. The falcon pecked at the gull’s neck a few times, keeping a strangle hold until the struggle was over. Then the falcon lifted into the air and flew away with the dead gull dangling from its scary talons. In a matter of a couple of minutes it was over.
I felt like getting up from the table and my fish and chips and run out to the beach. I thought maybe I should chase that predator away. But there was another part of me that was transfixed, realizing this is the way things are in the world. The falcon was only doing what it naturally does. The gull was the hapless prey of the day. The falcon’s fish and chips, if you will.
As Ryan, Kristin, and I watched I wondered if that’s the way I would have been on the day of Jesus’ Crucifixion. Would I have looked on, wanting to rush in and do something to help Jesus get out from under the talon hold of the cross and its spikes? Or would the same transfixion take over, holding my feet to the ground, stunning me into just watching the life and death drama? After Jesus died, would I have just gone back to my fish and chips? “It’s all over folks; move along; nothing to see here.” It is finished.
The scene with the falcon and my thoughts about the dramatic similarities with the scene at the Cross reminded me of the movie, La Dolce Vita. The opening scene of that movie shows a beautiful panoramic view of Rome’s skyline. The grand dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral gleams in the center of the postcard-like picture.
Then the sound of a helicopter is heard. At first it is a speck in the distant skyline. It is dragging something through the air with guide wires. As the helicopter flies closer, it becomes clear that what it being towed through the air is a huge stone statue of Christ.
As the helicopter flies over a beach filled with people sunning themselves, they look up and point. They are clearly annoyed by the intrusion of sound. They laugh, mockingly as the statue is flown overhead.
Then the helicopter is shown hovering over a slag heap at a rock quarry. The cables release their cargo and the statue of Christ plummets in slow motion until it hits the rubble below, breaking into thousands of pieces.
The message of that movie’s opening scene is clear: modern society has relegated Christ to the trash heap. Christ is no more than a piece of old stone--some historic relic, but no longer fitting in with the world’s current scheme of things. Christ is only worth mocking as the world of technology and modernity carries him away to be jettisoned with the rest of what we deem worthless and are ready to get rid of. The world, falcon-like, has pounced. It has carried away its prey. We go on with our meal and our lives. It is finished. And the world thinks it’s finished with him.
Is that what Christ meant when he uttered this anguished cry: “It is finished!” Is he simply saying, “I’m a dead man. I’m being carried away. The world has won and I have lost.” Is that what Christ is saying?
I don’t believe so. I hear these last words of Christ more as a statement of faith. A three word sermon. A proclamation. A shout of acclimation. It is not as much, “It is finished,” as much as it is, “It is accomplished.” The word Jesus uses means more than, “It’s over.” (That’s why the Savior wasn’t a woman. Because, as the saying goes, “A woman’s work is never done.”) Jesus is not just saying, “My time in this world is up. And the world has won.”
If something is finished, as in accomplished, that logically means it had to first be started. Something can’t be finished that hasn’t been begun at some time. If something was started and then accomplished, that means there was a plan. That plan would have certain steps that headed toward a set-forth conclusion. If something is finished or accomplished, then there has to be intention. There is a will involved--a will with desires and expectations.
When Jesus said that everything was done, he meant the plan had been accomplished. He meant that the intentions of God, that had been going on for all of history, were now culminated. God’s intentions to save the world from sin and from itself had been carried out. Each step of the way had been taken. Christ was that final and ultimate part of the plan.
Do we ever feel like we totally accomplish anything? Aren’t there always loose ends? For example, artists who seldom feel a painting is totally finished. A couple of weeks ago I drove to Wichita on my day off to go to the Wichita Art Museum. There was a couple of special displays that I wanted to see. Looking at a painting up close is always a kind of tingly experience for me. This is what the artist was actually working on. It’s not just some kind of print. Those are the artists knife and brush marks.
Several of the paintings were done with bold and broad strokes. But other paintings I looked at used thousands upon thousands of brush strokes. Van Gogh painted that way. I wonder, as I gaze at that kind of artwork, if the artist still wondered, “What if I just put a few more brush strokes of color over here, or over there.” When are they, if ever, fully satisfied, feeling the piece is “accomplished?”
Or authors who work on a poem or a short story for possibly years, still tweaking a word here or a phrase there. Do they ever get to the point where they feel their work just can’t be edited anymore, and it’s done?
The same holds true for that moment when we know our lives are over. In a flash, in an instant, we wonder, “Have I put all the brush strokes on my life?” “Have I written all the story that I wanted to write?” This is the only chance I will get to live my earthly life. Can I come to the end of it satisfied, and with a final sense of accomplishment?
A popular movie of a few years back was, “The Bucket List.” It starred Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. It was about a couple of older guys who were oddly thrown together in a hospital room as patients. After they had gotten to know each other a little bit, they decided they needed to each make a “bucket list.” That is, a list of things they wanted to do in life before they “kicked the bucket.” It’s a fairly funny movie, and certainly thought-provoking. I’m sure there were a lot of bucket lists written down after people saw that movie.
A bucket list has a way of helping you evaluate your life. What have you done with your life so far? What are you proud of? What aren’t you so proud of? What would you do if you could make a change? What’s keeping you from making those changes before you die? What do you have to look forward to? Those are all huge questions that just this one kind of list forces you to take a long look at.
What happens when time is up? You have more lists than you have time to accomplish what you’ve written on your lists. How can you come to the end of life and feel like you have done what’s been on your list--whether it be a list on paper or a list in your mind?
Jesus is on the Cross. He’s at the end of his life. Death is but a matter of moments away. One of the last things he says from that dreadful Cross, and that dreadful death is, “It is finished.” In another gospel, it says Jesus shouts this out. It’s a triumphant, shouting statement; not a statement of agonizing woe. He’s making a bold statement of faith: “Everything I set out to do, is now accomplished! It feels so good to be able to affirm this as I die!”
Wouldn’t it be great to feel the same when that moment arrives for us? Maybe that’s what we call “dying a good death.” We can say, as our Lord did, “It is accomplished.” All my lists are taken care of. I haven’t left anything unresolved or undone that I was meant to do. I have used my life well, and accomplished all that I hoped for with this life. I wouldn’t ever wish to have another life, because my lists are done. The time has come when I don’t get to have any more choices--but I’m good with that, because I have taken care of all my choices. And all is well.
The British Parliament abolished slavery in the West Indies on August 1, 1836. The decree, though, was not valid until the following year. So, on June 30, 1837, twenty thousand slaves united in Jamaica. At 11:00 p.m. of that day, all were dressed in white gowns. They knelt down. Faces were turned up in anticipation as the clock ticked towards midnight, and the beginning of the new day of July 1, 1837, the day of their emancipation. As the clock struck one second after midnight, those twenty thousand people rose to their feet as one, and joyously shouted together, “We are free! We are free! We are free!”
In the same way, but on a global and historic level, God established a decree thousands of years prior to the Cross. At a certain time, on a certain day, the arms of the Cross, not of a clock, would set the world free. The power of that old slave owner sin would be no more. At the same time Christ shouted out in triumph his last words, “It is finished,” a responding cry goes up from millions of people--past, present, and future: “We are free! We are free! We are free!”
What a great acclimation of faith. That which ultimately and most importantly needs to be accomplished, is done so by Christ on the Cross. It’s not something we can do for ourselves. We can’t include it on our bucket list, because we can’t accomplish it. Only Christ can do that for us. And if it’s not done, we are still lost, we are still slaves to sin.
If something is finished, that means there is nothing else that can or needs to be done. What was set out to be done, has been accomplished. No further acts of salvation are needed. No further saviors need to be sent. No other words need to be spoken. Everything God intended to be done, in order to free the world from sin, has been accomplished in Christ. There was an evangelist who was asked by a young man, “What must I do to be saved?”
To which the evangelist replied, “To late--it’s already be done.”
It is finished! We are free!
Prayer
O God,
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
that, in Christ,
our salvation is finished--
it is complete
it is accomplished and fulfilled.
We need that same sense of accomplishment.
We want to come to the end of our lives
knowing that we have done
all we were meant to do.
Give us the faith,
by your Holy Spirit
to do that.
We know that unfaith builds no cathedrals,
unfaith sings no songs,
unfaith never reaches,
never hopes,
never dares.
Unfaith walks alone,
weeps alone,
dies alone,
and leaves a life unfinished.
Give us the accomplishing kind of faith of the Savior:
a faith that stares into the shadows
and sees the form and shape of hope;
the kind of faith that peers into the unknown
and sees the promise of meaning in accomplishment.
We want the kind of faith that can only come from the Savior,
that liberates and sets us free to live,
fully
and abundantly.
In Jesus name,
Amen.
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