Scripture Reading: John 19:28-30 TEV
Jesus drank the wine and said, “It is finished!”
John 19:30
We humans are built to resist endings. The urge to hang on in spite of all the evidence we are experiencing is built into our genetic code to a degree that makes it difficult for us to surrender, to give up and acknowledge that anything is truly “finished”. So we tend to keep using our psychological powers of defense to hang onto things in our lives. We deny that the death has occurred, e.g. our marriage is over or we have lost our job or our new city is not like the old, etc., and we pine away for that which was or at least what we thought life was like. We spend an inordinate time remembering and thinking about the past, rather than accepting and moving forward into our new future.
There can be no resurrection in our lives without the full experience of death. And death requires surrender of that which has been in order to be open to the new life that follows. Jesus models this reality on the cross when, having completed his mission, he allows himself to give up his hold on his old life. Jesus knew when to quit fighting and accept the death he was facing, knowing that until he did so, his new life could not come into being.
So it must be for us as well. We must be willing to “let go and let God” accomplish God’s greater role in our lives so that we can be truly resurrected into our new life. The gospels record that Jesus was offered a bitter drink on the cross, something historians tell us included some sort of analgesic to help those who were crucified deal with the extraordinary pain that was involved. Still, it did not totally eliminate the pain – the pain of dying to the past is a bitter experience, which must be embraced in order for the new life to become a possibility. We too must learn how to say “it is finished” so that we may also come to experience our own resurrections.
Reflections 