“When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said “it is finished…”

Good Friday, 10 April 2020

Reflection on “When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said “it is finished…” John 19:30

Each year, when I hear or read the words of Christ from the Cross “It is finished.”, two competing questions present themselves in my mind: Are these words of defeat and resignation? Or, are these words ones of affirmation, a statement of successful completion of an assignment?  This year, so thought I, is the year to bring clarity to that dilemma.

Several months ago, during a social gathering with retired post-secondary colleagues and friends, all former professors of English or foreign languages, the rumor was advanced that teachers in our middle and high schools no longer teach English grammar.  The reaction in our small group to that shared information varied, ranging from simple sighs of “Oh?” to voiced words of disbelief, to pronouncements of despair that the apocalypse was upon us, to the joyful acclamation “it is meet and right’’ that we retired when we did.

Active vs. Passive voice
Regarding rumors: it has been always my position that rumors may indeed contain a grain of truth, or rumors may be entirely false.  My interest in this particular rumor, that English grammar was no longer being taught, weighed heavily on my mind, and not so as to accuse those who teach at the middle- and high-school levels of dereliction of duty.  Rather, just as rudimentary instruction is required in other disciplines then, most certainly, that expectation should be applied in the discipline [that] determines and is determined by the culture in which it functions.

Why should this matter of active voice vs. passive voice be of concern, so long as the gist of the topic is understood, one may well ask?  Expressed in today’s vernacular: who cares?  One should care, as a significantly different image emerges when one reads or hears “I have finished the task” and “It is finished.”  To be sure, in both instances, the task or assignment has reached or been brought to a conclusion.  Plainly stated, something has happened.  The significance lies in what is being emphasized.  In the former case (“I have finished the task.”), the speaker makes it clear that he/she has carried out his/her obligation.  In the latter (”It is finished.”), it is not so essential to know who completed the work, but that the task is over.  The emphasis is directed away from the speaker.

The writer of the Gospel according to John has translated the Aramaic or Hebrew, spoken by Jesus on the Cross, with the Greek word telelastai, “a common word and one used by merchants to mean ‘The price is all paid!’”, according to Warren Wiersbe in his work “Expository Outlines in the N.T.” (Wheaton, Ill.: Victors Books.)  Andrew Murray, in his treatise “The Secret of the Cross “ (Meadow Books 1998), makes a similar observation when he writes: “A servant would use telelastai when reporting to his or her master, ‘I have completed the work assigned to me.’” On this holiest of Holy Days, we hear again those sacred words “It is finished.”

“It is finished.” This assertion of Christ from the Cross demands an investigation that goes more deeply than that of a grammatical inquiry.  In contemporary culture, when one hears the word “passive,” one almost certainly imagines an individual who is not in control, who allows others to take advantage, possibly [to] abuse or demean him/her.  Passivity connotes weakness.  Why, one is tempted to ask, did Jesus choose to express himself in the passive voice?  What was he attempting to convey to those who had followed him, as well as to those who had judged and found him guilty of sedition and heresy?  By all biblical accounts of actions taken or words spoken by Jesus, he was not passive, so why the passive voice?  Not once did Jesus display a hint of weakness or shirk away from confrontation.  Surely in his time, as it does in our own era, it took courage to challenge authority, secular or religious.   It took courage to drive the money-changers from the Temple, when a possible penalty of torture could be levied against him for upsetting tradition and desecrating a holy site.  Jesus is not passive.  Would it, therefore, not have been more fitting to have gone on recorded as having said “I have finished”?  Why, then, does Jesus say in his final hours “It is finished”?  And so, I must pose a different question: Why this disconnect?  To whom, then, were these words addressed?

Credentialing or Connectivity:
Language is a useful tool.  It can reveal or conceal.  It can inform us of connections.  The three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as the Gospel of John, provide us with an insight into this perplexing expression “It is finished.”  There is an unspoken connectivity.  Too numerous that I may repeat them here, are the evidential instances throughout the Bible, both in the Old and in the New Testament, that explain the use of the phrase “It is finished.”  I appeal first to the Gospel according to Matthew.

Jesus occupies a unique status in the Divine Plan for the world.  The spirit of God cautions Joseph who would dispose quietly of this wife, Mary, because the child whom she was carrying was not his own.  A messenger from God appeals to Joseph’s already-evidenced discretion because “…that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.” Matt. 1:20f.  And that unique status of Jesus in the Divine Plan is reaffirmed in Matthew’s recording of events at the baptism of Jesus, when he writes affirmatively:
“And when Jesus was baptized…behold the heavens were opened and [Jesus] saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove…and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.’” (Matt. 3:16ff.)

Should there be still any ambiguity concerning Jesus’ credentials and connectivity, John informs us that the Jesus—whose words “It is finished” might cause one to envisage a being apparently crippled in defeat and despair—that Jesus was not an afterthought, an addition, an outsider or an outcast.  Rather, Jesus, a member of the eternal Trinity, was from the beginning an active participant in the Divine Plan:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”  (John 1:1f.)

In Interim Report: A Self-assessment
Given, therefore, Jesus’ position as the incarnate representative of the unseen God of creation, it should not surprise one that Jesus gives an interim report to the One who has sent him.  In the Gospel of John, as in the synoptic gospels, Jesus establishes a direct connection to the Divine One, and he does so in self-assessments, as he says:
“My meat is to do the will of him who sent me.” (John 4:34); “[I] seek not to do my will but the will of him who sent me.” (John 5:30); “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.” (John 6:38)

Even knowing what awaits him, Jesus does not once forget that he is not on earth to further his own inclinations and desires.  His prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Matthew, Mark (14:32 – 50), and Luke (22:42ff.) have recorded are, then, not the supplications possibly of a pre-deserter, but of one committed to seeing the task to completion.  Those prayers inform us, as well, to whom he gives an accounting.  At Gethsemane Jesus prays fervently, “not as I will, but as thou wilt,” and “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done.” (Matt. 26:39 – 42)  And when the crowd, promoted by the religious authorities, comes to arrest him, according to Matthew, “Jesus said to the crowds…but all this has taken place, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” (Matt 26:56)  In other words, Jesus reveals that above and directing him is God, whose plan of redemption he is executing.  He has not been passive.

The Final Report
“It is finished.”  Jesus gives a final report of his activities.  This utterance is addressed to two audiences [that] are mirrored in Jesus’ response to an inquirer during his prior ministry, an individual who had inquired how he might gain eternal life.  On that occasion, as recorded in the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus said: “The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.  The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.  There is no other commandment greater than these.”

As the Word Incarnate, Jesus is first reporting to the One that sent him.  In so reporting, Jesus does as did servants of his era, in the grammatical voice [that] directs attention from the “who” has done what, to the more important fact that what has been assigned and undertaken is complete, i.e. has been done.  That report goes to God the Creator of heaven and earth, with whom Jesus has been engaged from the very beginning of time.

“It is finished.”  Jesus reports, secondarily, to those who heard him then and to us who hear him now, not as a passive, inept, ineffectual, defeated being, but as someone having knowledge of what the original plan was.  That plan, that goal, stated in myriad ways throughout his earthly ministry, is recorded by John: “For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:40)

“It is finished.”  As we, on this Holy Day, meditate on these words of Christ, I would boldly suggest that the pressing question is not one of grammar, nor whether he went down in defeat or in successful fulfillment of the will of Him who sent him.  Rather, looming large before you and me and with Christ as our example is the question: How ready are we, his disciples, to honor his unequal and non-repayable sacrifice with an active, not passive, response to the Great Commission of that Summary of the Law, so that we may also in the end, with equal certainty, repeat the words spoken by our Savior on the Cross “It is finished.”

AMEN

The Rev. Clarence E. Butler, Ph.D.
Priest-in-Residence