It is finished!

So speaks Christ from the cross, his final words before surrendering this life to the inevitable. But these are not words of defeat. Not words that speak simply to the end of his mortal life. They are words that speak to the end of a plan initiated thousands of years earlier, a plan by God to bring a solution to the sin, the evil, and the brokenness of his great creation.

That plan has reached its conclusion. It is finished. The work is done. The world can and will now be set right. A world that we put wrong.

It began, according to Scripture, in the Garden when we humans decided we knew better than God on how to run things. That we could stand in judgment over what is good and righteous and what is not. In our arrogance, we disobeyed the one who had created us and now look at what we have wrought.

A world divided. Divided between nations who stare at one another across a divide of suspicion and, often times, violent conflict. A world divided between races, where the color of ones’ skin or the language one speaks are reason enough for us to look down upon another. A world divided even between genders, where women have often been treated as property or worse by men.

It’s a world where people go hungry when there is food enough for all. It is a world where many still succumb to disease, yet there is technology and science enough to cure many diseases. All because it is not profitable enough for the greedy to fix these things.

It’s a world of broken relationships, where marriages often collapse, where children and parents are often at odds. Where people live in fear of their neighbors.

This is our supposedly better world. This is what we have created. This is what God has been trying to fix ever since our fall so long ago. This is why God put the rainbow in the sky, with the promise to never again destroy us. That didn’t work. That didn’t fix the problem, so he tried something else. His new plan started with a man named Abraham and a promise that he and his own would be a blessing upon the whole world. God worked through this chosen people, protecting them from harm, and then at last, he sent a savior for the whole world through them.

He sent himself. Incarnate from the Virgin Mary, God came as Jesus of Nazareth. And he lived as we do, with all of our struggles, our flaws, our emotions, save one. Here was one who never forgot what God has always intended for his created. Here was one who always obeyed those rules he had set down. Here was one without sin, perfectly innocent.

This innocent one came as the blessing upon the whole world. He came and told of his purpose, who how God so loved this world that he had never ceased to work to save it and everyone in it. He loved it so much that he came even to die for its sake.

And so, when the time was right, Jesus allowed himself to be taken into custody by the ignorant and the frightened. Those, like so many of us, who didn’t understand, whose minds were too consumed with lust for power or fear of loss to truly hear his pleas. He was taken, put on trial in a mockery of true justice, and then sentenced to die on a cross.

The innocent one, the obedient one, God incarnate was hung on a cross. He was innocent. We’re not. It is us who belong up there, us and every other human being who has walked this earth, full of bluster and arrogance, still thinking we know better than our creator. But that’s not what happens. God incarnate as Jesus Christ dies for our sake.

This is how far God will go to fix the problem, to bring an end to sin and death. This is how much God loves each and every one of us. This was his plan all along. This is how he would save us, by dying for us. He would take the punishment we deserved upon himself.

It’s as if the judge in a court of law, after pronouncing sentence for our crimes, were to come down off his bench, push us aside, and offer forth his hands to take the shackles and be dragged off to our fate in our stead. This is what has God has done. This is what he always meant to do. This was his plan.

And on this day, so long ago, that plan came to fulfillment.

It is finished. Amen.