It Is Finished
The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
April 12, 2009
Easter Sunday
It Is Finished
John 20:1-18
We love stories, don’t we?
Stories of all kinds…
and the stories we love best
are those we read in the Bible:
Adam and Eve sent out from the Garden of Eden;
Moses parting the sea so the children of Israel could escape
the Egyptian army thundering down on them;
Jonah forced to rethink his attempt
to run away from God’s call to service
during his three-day stay in the belly of a fish;
Saul struck blind on the road to Damascus
as he attempted to track down and persecute
followers of the Way,
followers of a man named Jesus.
And then, of course, there are the stories of Jesus,
the stories that tell us about Jesus,
and help us learn about him,
beginning with his birth,
the narrative we love to recount every December.
And there is the story of Jesus’ baptism;
of his feeding the 5000;
his preaching the Sermon on the Mount;
his stilling waves and wind;
his healing, comforting;
teaching, preaching.
All the stories culminate in our hearing again
the story of Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem.
We begin with the story we heard last week,
the story of Jesus riding humbly on the back of a donkey
as he entered Jerusalem
to the shouts of Hosanna
and the waving of palm branches.
We move through the week
and on Maundy Thursday, as we hear the story
of Jesus having his last supper with his disciples,
we can almost see in the dim glow of the candlelight
beads of sweat on Judas’ brow
as he contemplated what he was about to do.
The story moves forward,
excruciating in its pain even after 2000 years.
Betrayal, arrest, trial,
shouts of “Crucify! Crucify!”
And then the agonizing walk our Lord took
out the western gate of the city
to the hill called “Golgotha”,
the “place of the skull”.
The gospels differ in the details of the story:
did Jesus carry the cross by himself
or did the Roman soldiers grab a bystander
to carry it when Jesus’ legs gave way underneath him?
Did one of the criminals crucified with Jesus repent,
or did they both taunt him
even as they themselves were dying?
Did the midday light give way to darkness
as Jesus’ head sank to his chest?
Before he breathed his last,
he spoke one last time.
But what were his final words?
Again, the stories differ.
Matthew and Mark tell us it was a cry of anguish,
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
(Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46)
Luke gives us a different cry, or were they words of hope?
“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”
(Luke 23:46)
John gives us a more cryptic response,
“It is finished”
(John 19:30)
But there the story comes to an end,
at least for the next three days.
Friday night.
All day Saturday, the Sabbath,
and then Sunday, the first day of the week,
through the early morning hours before sunrise.
Darkness,
silence.
Nothing.
Then comes Easter morning,
and we pick up with the story we know so well:
the women coming to anoint Jesus’ body,
the large stone rolled away,
the empty tomb,
angels, soldiers,
disciples filled with disbelief and fear.
But really, when we arrive here on Easter morning
there is no story.
No story to tell,
no story to hear.
No story at all.
Easter Sunday is as simple as
“the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Easter Sunday is as simple as
“He is risen”.
“Christ is risen”
“Christ is risen indeed.”
On that terrible Friday
Jesus’ lifeless body was taken down from the cross,
taken down carefully, tenderly by Joseph of Arimathea;
John tells us that Nicodemus helped him.
They wrapped Jesus’ body in linen cloth
and placed him in a tomb in a garden.
The setting of the sun brought the beginning of the Sabbath
preventing them from completing the burial rites;
They would have to finish their work
on Sunday morning, after the Sabbath.
For those three days, Jesus’ body lay wrapped tightly
on a cold slab of rock
in the pitch black of the tomb.
Jesus’ body was battered, bruised, and bloodied.
But then, in the dark,
in that sealed tomb,
God breathed life into his Son:
breathed life into Jesus,
the carpenter from Nazareth,
the one whose cross bore the mocking sign,
“King of the Jews”.
And this Jesus rose.
This was no ghost, no specter.
This Jesus bore every gruesome scar of his death --
not just those on his hands and feet,
but also those on his back from the flogging,
and those on his forehead from the crown of thorns
forced on him by the soldiers
who spit on him and mocked him.
This Jesus rose, rose by the grace of God,
the power of God,
and the love of God.
And as Jesus rose,
we can picture it, can’t we:
the linen wrappings falling away,
the stone that sealed the tomb rolling back,
as Jesus walked out of the tomb,
into the chilly dawn.
He is risen!
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen!
End of story!
Now, had the disciples done what
the chief priests feared they might do --
steal the body in the middle of the night
so that they could then spread the rumor
that Jesus had risen from the dead --
then we would have had a story….
a story that might have spread and caught on,
and traveled with the winds,
carried on the swirling eddies
that blew through Judea.
But at some point that story would have
been seen as just that: a story,
a story that was fiction, not fact,
and like the winds,
it would have eventually faded,
faded into history.
We know that the disciples were too afraid for their own lives
even to think of such a daring plot.
At the very moment that Jesus stepped out of the tomb
they were still cowering behind a locked door,
having spent a second sleepless night,
jumping at every noise.
Only the women had the courage to leave the room
and walk to the tomb
so they could complete the burial rites
that Joseph and Nicodemus had begun.
As Jesus stepped out of the tomb,
were his first few steps shaky, a little wobbly?
Did he breathe deeply of the cool morning air
to rid his lungs of the stale air of the tomb?
Did he walk about to warm himself
against the morning chill?
Did he look with pity on the Roman soldiers
who were deep in sleep,
and offer a prayer of mercy and forgiveness for them?
Did Jesus roll up the linen cloth that had covered his head
and set it apart from the other wrappings,
or did he leave that task to the angels?
We can build stories from all these questions,
but all that matters is what we say so firmly,
with such conviction on Easter Sunday:
He is risen!
Christ is risen!
Christ is risen indeed!
These are declarative sentences.
They need no introduction,
no conclusion.
He is risen!
The cross could not hold him.
The tomb could not hold him.
Death could not hold him.
God raised Jesus,
Father and Son together,
not together again, of course,
for they were never separated.
Not even death can separate us from God’s love.
God raised Jesus for you and me,
God raised Jesus to give us life, new life.
God raised Jesus so we could understand what Jesus meant
when he said from the Cross, “it is finished”:
What was finished was the old life;
What was finished was the hold sin had on us;
what was finished was death.
Paul put it this way in his letter to the Romans:
“The death Jesus died, he died to sin, once for all;
but the life he lives, he lives to God.
So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin
and alive to God in Christ Jesus…
For sin will have no dominion over you,
since you are [now]… under grace.”
(Romans 6:11)
In the fact of Christ’s resurrection
we live now in grace,
the grace of God
given us in Jesus Christ.
What is finished are grace-less lives;
in the resurrection life
ours are grace-filled lives.
Alistair McGrath captured the power
of the resurrection life so simply, yet so poetically,
“In the aftermath of Gethsemane,
we catch the fragrance of Eden”.
Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
we have been reconciled,
restored to a righteous relationship with God
Our lives wandering lost in the darkness is finished.
We are finished with fear,
worry,
hatred,
judgment,
war, darkness.
The resurrection life is filled with hope,
assurance,
mercy,
forgiveness,
peace,
love, and light.
We will never hunger
for we have the bread of life to feed us;
We will never thirst,
for we have living water to quench us.
“I am the resurrection and the life,”
says our Risen Lord,
“Those who believe in me
even though they die, will live;
and everyone who lives and believes in me
will never die.” (John 11:25-26)
If we want a story on Easter,
that’s it, right there.
The Son rose on that first Easter morning,
and brought new life to all the world,
and the life was the light of all people..
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.
The darkness could not overcome it;
The darkness can never overcome it,
for He is risen!
Christ is risen!
Chris is risen, indeed!
AMEN
posted by Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson @ 2:00 PM
