For a purpose God made man. He endowed the man and woman with gifts, and called them to be like God. Through childbearing they would become participants in God’s ongoing act of creation; through stewardship of the world they would learn love. Young and new as children, they would grow and mature. Man had an end, a goal: to take the wild world and make it ever-more beautiful through love and creativity.
But man sought pleasure, aesthetics, and wisdom apart from the Creator. They bought the lie that God was holding out on them, hindering them from being gods themselves. Thus man came to a different end, a bad end, a deadly end. He seemed finished.
That fact—that we are finished—can cause us increasing anxiety the more we realize the truth. Your teeth, your bones, your children, your homes – we experience a profound brokenness in every aspect of life. Perhaps we develop a skill, earn money, make friends, accomplish some of what we set out to do. But where does it leave us? There is a fundamental problem in the world, in our nature, in our politics, that we cannot repair.
When the Creator enters His own creation, He comes indeed to pay our debt, remove sin, and fulfill the Law. But more is happening than simply a transaction. God becomes man to effect a renewal, a rebirth. As a man, Jesus lives out man’s curse. In the curse, the earth brings forth thorns. Now those thorns are twisted into a crown. As Jesus is crowned with the curse, Pilate declares, “Behold the man!”
Each of those thorns represents not only Adam’s curse, but what we have added thereto. Your angry outbursts; your calculations and prevarications; your resentment and envy; your boasting and selfish ambition – all of it is pounded into Christ, by hammer, nail, and slashing of the whip’s tail. Today God says not to ancient Israel but to you:
“What have I done to you, O My people, and wherein have I offended you? Answer Me. What more could have been done for My vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? My people, is this how you thank your God?”
He has looked for good fruit in you this Lent. You were called to fast, but instead you feasted. You were called to pray, but instead you grumbled. You were called to give, but you have spent on yourselves. You are Judas, betraying your Lord. You are Pilate, weak in the face of pressure. You are Peter, cowering in fear. Your sins crucified Jesus.
Yet anticipating all this, we heard last night an undeserved word: Jesus, “having loved His own who were in the world … loved them to the end.” “To the end” is more than “to the finish.” The love of Jesus for us is “to the goal,” “to the perfection.” Love’s perfection is in the bleeding, sighing Jesus; a fountain of living water so exhausted that He thirsts, for everything He has and is He has given away. When Jesus was condemned, the rebel Barabbas went free. The rebel is set free, we are set free. With nothing left to possess, nothing left to do, now Jesus says, “It is finished.” That’s what man was meant to be: like God, not by seizing power, but by giving everything away. That’s what kind of God we have. That’s what kind of God-man Jesus is. He gives, He forgives, He loves to perfection.
In this Holy Communion, He joins Himself to you and keeps on giving. This means there is no more grasping, no more anger, no more anxiety, no more not forgiving. For everything in Jesus has been done, performed, accomplished, finished. Your end, your purpose, is now found in His cross and resurrection.
The holy prophet Habakkuk prayed, “In wrath, remember mercy.” And Jesus answered, “It is finished.”