Commentary on John 19:23-30

Traditionally, there are said to be seven last words of Jesus in the Gospels. John’s Gospel, in our reading today, gives us three of these: Jesus’s parting words to his mother and the beloved disciple, his statement of his thirst, and his final utterance before dying, “It is finished.” All of these statements have an obvious or surface meaning but also a deeper spiritual meaning.

In each case, Jesus is saying things that we might expect from someone who is dying. He is ensuring that his mother and his closest friend are bonded together so they can comfort each other after his death and so that his mother is provided for. He is giving expression to his intense suffering and the raging thirst that signals the approach of death. And with his final breath, he is indicating that his great ordeal is now over.

Each of these, however, has a deeper layer of meaning. On the cross we see Jesus giving life through his death. One of the ways that happens is through the birth of the believing community. Here the community is formed at the foot of the cross as a family, in this case a mother and son, even though the two are not biologically related. Jesus’s death brings about a new community bound together by even closer ties than in a family. They are given authority to share Jesus’s own sonship and therefore belong together as children of the Father. 

Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus says that his food is to do the will of the one who sent him (4:34). His thirst here on the cross is not just physical. More fundamentally, it signifies the “thirst” to carry out the Father’s will, which is the driving force of his mission and is what finally led him to the cross. The drink he is given is handed to him on a hyssop branch, a rather fragile plant that would, with some difficulty, hold up a sponge full of liquid. But more importantly, hyssop is used at Passover for the sprinkling of blood, the blood of the covenant. It is this sign to the reader that John intends. We are to see here an allusion to Passover. Indeed, according to John, Jesus dies at the very hour of the slaughter of the Passover lambs.

Finally, Jesus’s last statement, “It is finished,” is not simply one of relief that his suffering is now over. More fundamentally, it is a statement of triumph, of victory. His life’s mission has been achieved. He has given life to his disciples through his death, and the “ruler of this world,” the prince of darkness, has been overcome.

The point is underscored by the fact that, with his final statement, Jesus surrenders his spirit. At one level this simply means that he dies. But it, too, has a deeper meaning. Jesus’s life is not, in one sense, taken from him. Rather, he surrenders it because he has divine authority over life and death, including his own. Earlier in the Gospel, speaking as the Good Shepherd, Jesus says of his own life, “I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again” (10:17–18). This statement indicates the unique and God-given authority he alone holds over life and death as the only Son of the Father. It represents his divine origins and his unique and intimate relationship with God.

But there is a further factor at play here. The word “spirit” can refer to Jesus’s own internal spirit—that is to say, his life—or it can refer to the Holy Spirit. Both meanings are likely present here. It would seem that at the very moment of his dying, Jesus breathes out the Spirit, which will be his final, parting gift to his disciples. The Spirit will be his presence with them, leading, guiding, and teaching them, and drawing them into the fullness of truth as it is embodied in Jesus.

Tonight we commemorate the beginning of the three greatest days of the church’s year. It is the night of Jesus’s arrest. It is the night when he, according to the first three Gospels, institutes the holy Eucharist and, in the Gospel of John, washes the feet of his disciples. Both are sacramental acts. They invite participation in Jesus’s life-giving and cleansing death using basic elements of human life: water, bread, wine. Both events, footwashing and Eucharist, speak of the ways in which we share, body and soul, in the central event of our salvation.

As we participate in these events and as we meditate on the meaning of Jesus’s death, we are invited to place ourselves imaginatively with the holy women and the beloved disciple at the foot of the cross. They stand over against the four soldiers, those symbols of colonial and imperial violence, who gamble for Jesus’s clothing, his last effects—indifferent to his suffering, unaware of the eternal riches he really has to share.  

We stand together with these four women who have remained Jesus’s faithful companions: his mother and his mother’s sister, along with two others—Mary of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. With them stands the unnamed, beloved disciple. With them we gaze at the icon of the crucified Christ, the great symbol of our salvation, the object of our heart’s love and devotion.

Tonight we are invited to enter onto holy ground, to share company with those closest to Jesus. Together with them, we look upon the Crucified One who draws us into communion with himself and with one another, who shares with us his own radical openness to the Father’s will, and who achieves on our behalf victory over evil, over sin, and over death itself. 

PRAYER OF THE DAY

Holy God,

When facing death, Jesus thought of his mother, Mary, and commended her to the disciple whom he loved. Inspire us by this act of care within community, so we can live with one another in holy love. Amen.

HYMNS

Go to dark Gethsemane   ELW 347, H82 171, UMH 290, NCH 219
Amazing grace   ELW 779, H82 671, UMH 378, NCH 547, 548

CHORAL

Love bade me welcome, David Hurd