Hello friends.
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood Monk-in-Docs.
Welcoming you to Good Friday,
As we walk through Lent and Holy Week.
Having come 40 days through the wilderness and now to Good Friday.
Where today we reflect on the words of John's Gospel,
Chapter 19,
Verses 28 to 30.
Before we begin today,
I invite you just to come,
To sit,
To be,
To rest.
May your ears be open to the whispers of the Spirit.
May your mind be open to the thoughts and meditations that come from those words.
And may your heart be open to receive those words as good soil,
In which the seeds of those words can sprout and bring forth beautiful fruit in your life and in the life of the world.
And so we reflect on the words from John 19.
Later,
Knowing that all was now completed and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled,
Jesus said,
I am thirsty.
A jar of wine vinegar was there,
So they soaked a sponge in it,
Put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant and lifted it to Jesus' lips.
When he had received the drink,
Jesus said,
It is finished.
With that,
He bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Today,
We hear some of the final words of Jesus from the cross.
It is finished.
Now,
At first,
Those words might sound like the words of defeat.
The crowds have mocked him,
His friends have scattered,
His body has been broken.
From the outside,
It looks like everything has failed.
But the Gospel invites us to hear these words a little differently.
He doesn't say,
I am finished.
He says,
It is finished.
I wonder if these are the words not of defeat,
But of fulfillment.
All through the Gospel,
Jesus has spoken about a work that God had given him to do.
The work of revealing God's heart.
The work of gathering people back into communion.
The work of showing the world what divine love looks like.
And now,
At the cross,
That work reaches its completion.
The cross isn't the collapse of Jesus' mission at all.
It's not the end,
But it's the moment where love goes all the way.
The Gospel also tells us something very important about how Jesus dies.
It says,
He gave up his spirit.
Notice the wording there.
No one's taking the life from him.
It literally says,
He gave up his spirit.
He gives it.
So even here,
Jesus is still acting from freedom.
He's still loving.
He's still offering himself.
In fact,
Everything in his life has moved towards this moment.
He washed the feet of his disciples.
He welcomed the outcast.
He forgave sinners.
He healed the broken.
And now,
On the cross,
He gives the last and greatest sign of that same love.
Love that doesn't try and protect itself,
But rather pours itself out completely.
Completely.
But you might ask,
What is the work that is finished?
The work is reconciliation.
Human history has been marked by division between people,
Between communities,
And between humanity and God.
And so humanity does what it often does when confronted with truth and love.
We reject it.
We resist it.
We try and silence it.
The cross is the moment where human violence is fully exposed.
But something extraordinary happens here.
God doesn't answer violence with violence.
God answers violence with faithful love.
Even as humanity rejects him,
Jesus continues to love.
Even as he's crucified,
He forgives.
And in that moment,
Something's revealed that changes everything.
That God is not against us,
But God is for us.
The cross becomes the place where hostility ends and reconciliation begins.
And that leads us to the questions we might ponder on a day like today.
If God's response to human violence is faithful love,
Then what should our response be?
Our world still operates on cycles of blame,
Retaliation,
Division.
Not just between individuals,
But between governments,
Between nations,
Between political parties.
But the cross shows us that there is another way.
The way of Christ is the way of self-giving love.
Love that forgives.
Love that refuses to mirror hatred.
Love that keeps choosing faithfulness,
Even when it's costly.
This is the love that heals relationships.
This is the love that rebuilds communities.
This is the love that slowly but surely transforms the world.
So when Jesus says it is finished,
It's not an announcement of the end of hope.
It's actually an announcement that love has completed its work.
The work of revealing the heart of God.
The work of opening the path of reconciliation.
The work of showing us the way that we are now called to live.
And now that work continues in you and me.
Because the story of the cross doesn't end with death.
The love that's poured out here will soon become the life of resurrection.
But until we get there,
May grace,
Peace and love go with you as you sit with these questions about love's revealing work today and all days.
Amen.
May grace and peace of God be with you.
Until tomorrow.
Bye for now.
