“It Is Finished”

John 19:28-30

INTRODUCTION

The story is told of a young soldier in Italy who jumped into a foxhole just ahead of the explosion of an artillery round. His hand touched metal, and he brought up a silver crucifix, left. It must have been left behind by the man who dug the foxhole.

A moment later his chaplain landed beside him in the foxhole.

Holding out the crucifix, the first soldier gasped: “Am I glad to see you! How do you work this thing?”

We laugh at that story because we know that this precious symbol of our faith isn’t a good luck charm.

It has no magical powers. But it represents the most important event in the history of the world.

And it is the event that makes all the difference.

Our Christian faith is well-represented by the image of the cross on which Christ died.

I never met my great grandfather Sommerville. He died long before I was born.

But from the stories told in our family, he was a beloved and godly man.

The family he was born into was desperately poor. As a child in Scotland he never got an education.

He was born hard-of-hearing.

When he was seven he was sent to school. But he was sent home two weeks later with a note from his teacher: “Don’t send Willie to school any more. He’s so hard of hearing that he can’t hear anything. I can’t teach him.”

So he went to work at the coal mine nearby.

When Great Grandpa grew up, he married and brought his wife and three children to the United States.

I don’t know much about his working life, but from the stories I’ve heard he was an enthusiastic Christian. He knew his Bible and could preach.

My other great grandfather on my father’s side founded a tent and awning factory. He was a successful businessman.

He hired Great Grandpa Sommerville as janitor in his factory.

He told Great Grandpa that he didn’t want him to spend too much time pushing the broom.

What he really wanted him to do was to go to the women who ran the sewing machines and talk to them about the Lord.

So Great Grandpa Sommerville would push his broom and go from woman to woman. He was friendly and they enjoyed his attention.

He would coax the ladies to learn Bible verses.

But there was one woman who resisted his efforts to get her to learn verses.

She was a Catholic, and in those days many Catholics believed that Protestants surely weren’t on their way to heaven; and it was common among Protestants to believe that Catholics were living in spiritual darkness.

In those days, so my father said, only Catholics wore crosses. It was sort a badge of their faith.

So this woman came to work one day wearing a large cross on a chain around her neck.

She thought her cross would warn Great Grandpa Sommerville to leave her alone.

But, so the story goes, that when Great Grandpa came to her machine and saw the cross, he came up to her and took the cross in his fingers and said, “That is the most beautiful thing in all the world. That is the thing in all the world that I love the most.”

And he told her in very few words just how he felt about the cross and its meaning—and moved on.

From that time on she was his friend and learned her verses every day.

Because the cross of Christ is at the heart of our faith, and because next week is the beginning of passion week—the week during which Jesus gave his life for us on the cross—I think it is fitting to talk about Christ’s death for us.

John 19:26-30: “After this, when Jesus knew that all was finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of vinegar was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the vinegar on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

I. Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus “gave a loud cry and breathed his last.” John tells us that Jesus said, “It is finished,” then “bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

A. This word “It is finished,” as it came to the ears of spectators must have had different meanings.

To Jesus’s enemies, “It is finished” would have meant that the troublemaker had now silenced and they could breathe a sigh of relief—things would go back to the way they were before this upstart from Galilee had upset their domination of the religious life of the nation.

To the Enemy of our Souls, “It is finished” it may have meant that he had won. Finally, God’s purposes to redeem the world from sin and darkness had come to nothing.

To Jesus’s friends, “It is finished” meant that all their hopes and dreams were over. The one they had put their faith in as their Lord and Savior was gone. The one they had loved and followed and who had brought forgiveness, new life, and hope into their lives was gone. All that made life worth living was gone.

To Jesus, “It is finished” must have meant that he had completed to work God had sent him into the world to do. He had been faithful unto the end.

B. According to Matthew’s gospel, “at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom…” (Matthew 27:31).

The temple curtain represented the separation of sinful humans from God’s presence. When the Temple curtain was torn in two, that meant that Jesus’s death had opened up the way for sinners to come into the presence of God.

So to God, “It is finished” meant that the work of reconciliation between God and the world was done. St. Paul would express it this way: “Through Christ, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

II. We remember that according to Matthew and Mark as Jesus hung on the cross, he cried out in his agony: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

A. We see from this how terrible Jesus’s death was to him.

He was quoting the first words of Psalm 22, a psalm written by a godly man who was suffering such torment that he was in despair.

We believe that that Psalm was in Jesus’s mind as he suffered because there are so many expressions in it that Psalm that fit the situation.

B. But the end of Psalm 22 is a hymn of triumph.

So, according to John, some time after that cry of desolation, Jesus uttered a cry of triumph—the words we have just read: “It is finished!”

We can believe that after Jesus cried out in despair: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he was strengthened to see his death as the triumph that it was—a triumphant victory over sin and death and hell.

III. A story

My mother’s father came to America from Russia as a young man.

Long ago, my Grandfather Altergott told me the story of how he found assurance of salvation.

Not long after he arrived in the United States Grandpa was working in a tailor shop in Kansas City.

One Monday, before beginning his work, Grandpa fished out of his pocket a Sunday school paper he had received at church the day before.

Do you remember Sunday school papers?

We got them every Sunday. It always had a picture, a verse to memorize, a puzzle, a story from the Bible, and maybe another story about faith.

Grandpa got out his Sunday school paper and spread it out on the table before him before he began cutting his cloth.

Then he read this story he read that changed his life.

Long ago there lived somewhere in Europe a young nobleman.

He was a fine important young man, admired by many, but he lived a careless and wicked life.

As time went by, he began to feel bad about his evil life, and he looked for a way to make amends.

He learned that there was a monastery in a country 700 miles away, which was famous for the rigorous life it imposed on the monks who lived there.

The young nobleman determined to join that monastery and try, by suffering and acts of devotion, to find the forgiveness he craved. He journeyed for many days on horseback and finally reached the monastery.

He knocked at the door, and an old monk came and opened the door

The young man told the old monk of his willingness to endure any penance to clear his conscience and find forgiveness.

The old monk looked at him with his face beaming and said, “You’re too late!”

The nobleman was shocked, but the old monk went on: “You’re too late to atone for your sins because Jesus has already done it for you. When Jesus died he said, “It is finished!” And in a simple way the monk explained the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross.

When Grandpa read that story he finally understood the truth about salvation, and there at the cutting table in the tailor shop he put his faith in Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

When he told me the story, Grandpa chuckled and said, “That young man traveled 700 miles to find Christ, but I had to come 7000!”

CONCLUSION

When Jesus said, “It is finished!” we are to understand that now the work of redemption is complete. The hardest part is done. The price has been paid. The suffering is over. The victory is won. Everything is different. It is only for us to give ourselves to Jesus and accept the gift of salvation.

And that is what we are to remember when we look at a cross.