"When Jesus received the wine, he said "It is finished."
John 19:30
Whew... take a moment here. Ponder this... Can you imagine the exhaustion? It's been a long three years, full of frustrations ("You of little faith, why are you afraid?" Matthew 8:26), sorrow ("Jesus wept" John 11:35), and anger ("He turned over the tables of the moneychangers…" Matthew 21:12). Three years Jesus spent knocking on our hard hearts and thick skulls to get us to …what? To know Him! To know the great LOVE. "Now, this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God…"(John 17:3) Jesus lived to show us how to live, how to be fully human, that is, alive in the love of God. This was risky. Caesar called himself God, Herod murdered those who challenged him (even those he perceived to be a challenge to him), the entrenched priestly class, the Pharisees, did not want their comfortable mega-yacht rocked. So, take another moment here…think about it…this is exhausting!! In light of this, one completely understands why Jesus so often went away by himself to pray, to decompress, to vent to his Father. He had to recharge. He was challenging the system, a number of systems in fact, by declaring the rightful place of the kingdom of God in the world, in each person's life. He knew what was coming. Since his baptism by John, his sense of mission had become clear. At the wedding in Cana he told his mother "My time has not yet come." (John 2:4) But it had begun, and he changed water into the very best wine. Now, on Golgotha, his time had come. He'd come full circle. And after a taste of the most bitter wine, he could finally say "It is finished." But, as Rabindranath Tagore wrote, "Death is not extinguishing the light; it's turning down the lamp because the dawn has come." Thanks be to God!
Patti Sachs
