Jesus in the last moments

[AI translation] The Scripture as read shows us Jesus in the final moments before the death of the rushing death. Only minutes to go now, he is about to be released. A few more words, then death will come, bow his head and release his soul... These last moments, this agony of dying, this last step on the road of life, this last agony, this last agony, this last step on the road of life, is a very significant stage of our lives. Not because there is anything that can be done - I don't think it is a particularly actionable occasion - but because of what happens inside you. It is supposed to be a time when you relive your whole life. It's like a fast-motion film, rewinding everything you've experienced. In these last moments, you come face to face with the reality of your own life. These last moments are honest moments. Here there are no more scenes, no more masks, and in the bright light of the fast approaching judgment, one's true essence is revealed without any hypocrisy or acting.The last moments of life are not usually played out in public. It is not a spectacle for others, but a very intimate occasion. Only the closest relatives can be present, and often not even those. And so, on Good Friday, the last moments of Jesus' life, we can all be present. When someone is dying in a hospital bed, a sign on the door says: no visitors by doctor's orders. Not here! Here, on Calvary, everyone is allowed, even invited! Jesus dies in full public view, suspended on a high pillar for all to see. All the details of His death are laid bare before us. Even the very last moments. So come, people, all of you who will one day also have to die, come here, very close to the cross, hear and see Jesus die!
Do you know what is so wonderful about dying on the cross? It's that as horrible as it is - because it's terribly horrible - it's so majestic. As horrible as it is - because it is horrible - it is so glorious. As ugly, bloody, cruel as it is, yet so exalted! The tortured, humiliated human face becomes so divine in the end that we almost kneel before it. In the final moments of this brutal execution scene, the glory of divine majesty shines forth. How good it is to know that the beauty and grandeur of the last moments of human life do not depend on how soft the pillows, how quiet the room, how caressing the arms of caring love... As much as I would wish everyone to spend their last moments in such conditions, it is far from certain that they will get them in a world threatened by bombs. None of us can know where or in what environment he will be living when the end comes. But it is not the end that matters, it is how he will spend his last moments! Jesus will die on the shameful tree of shame in overflowing glory. It is as if the terrifying darkness of a black Good Friday is suddenly pierced by a brilliant ray of light from the glory of Easter morning. As if that rough crown of thorns were transformed into a shining royal crown. As if that dreadful death-bed, that bloody cross, were transformed into a shining chariot on which the triumphant, conquering champion of death, hell, and the devil drives straight into eternity, all is changed at the moment when the last triumphant cry bursts forth from dying lips, "CONQUERED!"
"It is finished!" Which of us would dare to say this in the last seconds before death? Not as it is done here, that is to say, not with cheap self-conceit, vain conceit, but as it were before the face of God: with holy earnestness and conviction! For look: here something is happening like a servant coming before his lord to give an account, to give an account of something. Yes, what is really happening here is that a divine Messenger is returning from his mission to his Sender, his Lord, and reporting the result! Here One comes back with his whole life and work to God from Whom he has received the commission. Behold, then, so hear him say, "It is finished!" He does not say, "Well, at last, that's over, that's done with, we're through with it..." - but he says, as he lays down his whole life's work before God, "It is finished!"
Oh, how different it is from the dying of any other man. When we come to the very end of our earthly journey, half-written letters will be left behind us on the desk where the pen has fallen from our hands. Our lives will be like a construction site suddenly abandoned, many a fine plan left unfinished, many a dream unrealised. We always die at the wrong time, in the middle of our work. Who can say that they have done everything and then die?! Who can surrender his soul to God with the peace and reassurance that all is done? All is done? Oh no, indeed! Is it not rather the case that most men sink down to their death with a final sigh, "It is not done! My work has failed, my happiness has failed, my life has failed." Oh, but there is an awful lot in our lives that we have messed up and can never put right again! Stains that will never come clean, rips, wounds that will never heal! Yes: these are the things people say before they die. It's what I hear at deathbeds. These are the confessions people make in their last moments. No matter how sick one is, no matter how old one is, no matter how well one has used one's life, no matter how much one has worked, no matter how much one would not have been worth to give one more minute of one's miserable life: still, in the last moments, one sighs: "I would like to be cured, to do this or that, to please my grandchildren - to live!" For one always feels before death that, alas, I have not yet accomplished so much that I would have wanted, that I should have done! There is only one deathbed where a dying man does not groan like this, and that is the wonderful deathbed of nails, of mockery, of cruelty, of blood, on which Jesus died on the cross. There is not another like it in the whole world! What no man has ever said in his last moments, because he could not say it, because he dared not say it, Jesus said, "It is finished!"
"It is finished!" But what is finished here, and so finished? Perhaps the best answer is what the 12-year-old child Jesus said to His mother when they came to find Him. Behold, then, this is what He has now done, this is what He has finished. The things of His Father - that was the quintessence of His whole life and death. This was His food to do the will of Him who sent Him. From the very first manifestation of His consciousness to the very last beating of His heart, He had carried, He had worked, and now He was doing the things of His Father. In fact, "these things" of His Father can be expressed in a single word, for all the "things" of His Father were concentrated in this one word: Redemption! It was to be done by Jesus so that God could forgive man without compromising His own righteousness, so that God could love the sinner without loving his sin, so that the one who sinned would not be damned when he deserved to be damned. It was the mission of Jesus, his commission, to accomplish all that was necessary for our happy life, for our eternal salvation, for you and me, to obtain for us redeemed life, life reconciled to God, life imbued with the powers of eternity, life purified in the new birth, life freed from the compulsion of Satanic influences, life more powerful than death: eternal life! As if to say: 'Father, what you have entrusted to me, all is done. I have put on human flesh, I have plunged into human sin, into the sea of human debt, into the abyss of human death! I have become man, I have become sin, I have become a curse, I have paid all in place of mine, for mine, all exactly as we agreed in eternity: behold, it is finished!
Do you feel how much divine dignity, power, exultant glory there is in these otherwise terrible last minutes? In the broken eyes there is almost a gleam of joy, the blanching lips seem to cry, "Victory! Behold, indeed: the dying Jesus is the triumphant Christ! It is finished! Heaven rejoice, earth rejoice, Hail sinners! The great work, God's great work of redeeming the world: it is finished!
And yet now I feel that we should not rejoice here first, but weep. For it is here, under the cross, that man becomes truly sinful. Without Christ I would be willing to think of myself as good, innocent, almost sinless. But it is here, at the cross, that we find out just how depraved we are! Just as unfaithful as Judas, just as untrustworthy as Peter, just as cowardly as Pilate, just as hypocritical as Caiaphas, just as impressionable as the crowd, just as despicable as any of the characters in the Good Friday scene. For there it was not pronounced evil that led Jesus to the cross, but human religiosity, and vanity, and cowardice, and indecision. "All the pains and death I have brought upon you!" That is literally true! Look at your hands! Yes, your hands. That's the hand that nailed Jesus to the cross. This is the hand that struck Jesus in the face! You can wash your hands like Pilate, but the blood of Jesus won't come off! Every sin you commit is a punch in the face of Jesus. Every little lie - a nail in his hand. Every angry or impure outburst is a thorn in His crown of thorns. Yes: look at your hands! What have you done? You put Him there on the cross! But look: He does not accuse, He even smiles, as if He were smiling at you, He positively encourages you when He says, "It is finished! For it was precisely because you and I are so miserable that we needed redemption, and it is precisely the redemption of such miserable people that was accomplished there on the cross! The man, therefore, who comes to repentance through the realization of his sins, receives forgiveness here on the cross.
So there is rejoicing, but only after weeping. Here it is really as Jesus says: "Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted." Somehow it is that the more time one spends under the cross of Christ, the happier and more certain one is of the reality of salvation, forgiveness of sins and God's eternal love! "It is finished!" is the great shout of victory from the lips of the victorious Jesus! And for those who now grasp this triumphant declaration in faith, this very end of Jesus' life on earth will be the happy beginning of a new, redeemed life. Here, in the last moments of Jesus' life on earth, eternal life begins for us.
Would that we too could be such happy people, echoing with gratitude in our lives, and one day in our deaths, that all is truly done. All that is necessary to live a blessed life and die in peace, all, but all, "COMPLETED!"
Amen
Dated Good Friday afternoon, March 27, 1959.