It Is Finished… Not!
Halleluiah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Halleluiah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Grace to you and peace from our Lord Jesus Christ, who has risen and lives! Halleluiah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Amen.
In the spring of 1910, in the cold, remote reaches of Greenland, a glacier gave birth to an iceberg the size of the coliseum in Rome. Those who watched its birth must have thought, “Well, that’s that. It’s done,” for the iceberg left the shore of Greenland and moved down a lonely fiord into the open sea. Ninety-nine percent of the icebergs that are calved on the shores of Greenland drift slowly south, melting away in the salt and warmer waters of the currents offshore until there is nothing left. No one thought anything of it. It was finished. The iceberg would soon be a memory.
But, in reality, the story had just begun. Little did citizens of Greenland know that this iceberg had a rendezvous with destiny … more than two years after it was born on the cold shores of Greenland. This iceberg would change history and forever shatter the world’s ideas of what icebergs could be and do. On April 15, 1912, now only one-tenth of its original size, this iceberg encountered the RMS Titanic… and, in the blink of an eye, that iceberg went from unknown to unforgettable. More than fifteen hundred (1500) people died in that encounter with destiny, and editorials and documentaries produced in the years since that unforgettable encounter have alternately blamed the iceberg for being in the wrong place or the humans on board the ship for making too many mistakes on that dark, lonely night in the North Atlantic.
Two thousand years ago, on a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem, darkness covered the land. Three common criminals hung on crosses outside the city gate. No one thought anything of it. The men were dying and most of the crowd hoped that it would all be over by sundown, the beginning of the Sabbath. As he hung on the cross, one of the criminals cried, “It is finished.” And that is exactly what the scribes and the Pharisees thought as they witnessed Jesus’ death. It was finished… it was over… done. This man that some called the Son of God was dead. Even his disciples had deserted him. On that lonely hill outside the city, only a mother, another woman and one man waited for the end. They heard him cry, “It is finished.” They, too, wondered if that was the end of the story… the story that began with a chorus of angels singing to shepherds on a hillside a few miles to the south. “It is finished.” But, in reality, the story had just begun. Little did citizens of Jerusalem know that this man had a rendezvous with destiny. This man would change history and forever shatter the world’s ideas of what a God could be and do.
When Jesus cried, “It is finished,” he did not mean “It is over”… “It is done.” What he meant was that what God had been working on since the beginning of time was completed. Consummatum est. Not “It is finished”, but “It is accomplished.” Since the beginning of time, God has been seeking a relationship with us… his creatures. From the dawn of time, God put into motion a plan for reconciliation that only reached its fruition on a lonely hill outside Jerusalem. On that hill, one man died so that all might live… and all enjoy a relationship with the Creator God himself. Consummatum est. “It is accomplished… it is finished.” The work is done… the masterpiece is complete. The old has died… that the new might live… live… and grow… and thrive. Did any of those who watched our Savior die realize that just two thousand years later, the little band of faithful followers would number in the billions? “It is finished”… Not!
It is finished, but it is not over. The story has just begun. Our Savior died so that we might live. Our Savior lives so that we might be exalted with him in glory. Halleluiah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! What God accomplished on that lonely hill outside Jerusalem gave us the means to be what God created us to be… brothers and sisters of Christ and heirs to the Kingdom of God! Consummatum est! “It is finished.” It has been accomplished. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again!
Isaiah foretold it in the passage that Ralph read to you this morning. Listen again to those words: “And he [God] will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
What God accomplished in the resurrection of Jesus is the exaltation of our Lord… and our own hope for eternal life! Today, in the wonder of the resurrection, we know that it is possible… It is possible for us… all of us… each of us… to be raised and to live eternally with God. How can we know that… and not be changed? Because we know it, we must be changed. After all, as the psalmist said, we were created a little lower than the angels and given power and dominion over all that God created. Now, through the grace of God… and the sacrifice of God’s only Son… we have been restored to fullness of life. “It is finished”… and it has only just begun.
Consummatum est. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Indeed, as the young man told the women at the empty tomb, he goes before us to Galilee. There, we will find him, just as he said. Isn’t that the way that it always is with God? One minute we are waiting for him to appear… and the next, we are running to catch up with him, because he has gone ahead of us, leading the way into the future. Halleluiah! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Amen.
Mark 16:1-8; Isaiah 25:6-9