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"It is finished."
John 19:30

It is finished" is not a death gurgle. "It is finished" is not "I am done for." "It is finished" will not be, as we know from the tradition of the ordering of these words from the cross, the last words of Jesus. "It is finished" is a cry of victory. "It is finished" is the triumphant cry that what I came to do has been done. All is accomplished, completed, fulfilled work.

The work that is finished, moreover, is the cross. He will be and is resurrected, but the resurrected One remains the One crucified. Rowan Williams reminds us of Pascal's stark remark that "Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world." This is a remark that makes unavoidable the recognition that we live in the time between the times—the kingdom is begun in Christ but will not be consummated or perfected until the end of the world. Williams observes that Pascal's comment on Jesus' ongoing agony is not an observation about the deplorable state of unbelievers; it is instead an exhortation to us, those who believe in Christ. It is an exhortation not to become nostalgic for a supposedly less compromised past or take refuge in some imagined purified future, but to dwell in the tension-filled time between times, to remain awake to our inability "to stay in the almost unbearable present moment where Jesus is."

The Gospel of John makes explicit what all the Gospels assume—that is, the cross is not a defeat but the victory of our God. Earlier in the Gospel of John a voice from heaven responded to Jesus' request that the Father's name might be glorified through his obedience, saying, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." Jesus tells us this voice came for our sake so that we might know that "Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (John 12:28-32). That "lifting up" is the cross, the exaltation of the Son by the Father, making possible our salvation.

This is, moreover, as Pilate insisted, the King of the Jews. That kingship is not delayed by crucifixion; rather, crucifixion is the way this king rules. Crucifixion is kingdom come. This is the great long-awaited apocalyptic moment. Here the powers of this world are forever subverted. Time is now redeemed through the raising up of Jesus on this cross. A new age has begun. The kingdom is here aborn, a new regime is inaugurated, creating a new way of life for those who worship and follow Jesus.

Creation rightly describes the work done here. In his book Believing Three Ways in the One God, Nicholas Lash calls attention to a remark in a fifth-century calendar on March 25, a day identified as the martyrology of Jerome, which says, "Our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, and conceived, and the world was made." Lash observes on this day, the day of crucifixion, God brings all things alive, creating ex nihilo making a home in our sin-scarred world. "Out of the virgin's womb, Christ is conceived. Out of that world-threatening death on Calvary, life is new-born from an empty tomb. Christ's terror is God's Word's human vulnerability. But, it is just this vulnerability, this surrender, absolute relationship, which draws out of darkness finished life, forgiveness of sins."

On the sixth day of creation "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). So on the seventh day "God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done" (Genesis 2:2). Accordingly the seventh day was hallowed. But God's work, the work of the Trinity, is consummated in Jesus' great declaration from the cross, "It is finished." His life, his death, his resurrection, as Irenaeus insisted, recapitulates creation, recapitulates God's covenant with Israel, uniting creation and redemption in Incarnation.

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March (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49