It is finished; it is begun




   
It is finished and it is only just begun!
These last words of Jesus on the cross often get mistaken for ultimate finality, much like many of us mistake death as an endpoint. 
I am reminded as I think of these words of how many of us have many moments in our lives when we think we are "done"; or that we have "arrived". Even more likely we think that we ought to have done so and berate ourselves for not yet!
Jesus spoke these words on the cross, in the midst of a cosmic plan. His earthly being was "finished" but resurrection and ascension were to come, not to mention the continuous inbreaking of His Presence as the Risen One among us. 
In this period after Easter when we still wake up to the pandemic and isolation, when we are again instructed to Love One Another as though for the first time, I wonder whether "it is finished" might help us die to our false selves and adopt "it is begun" as our Easter mantra? We are finished with life in a dark tunnel or tomb; we step out as Easter people into and with the Light of Christ. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Say My Name

Image
  Respect the dignity of every human being. It begins with their name. It honors who they are. It speaks their name lovingly. Say My Name by Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi ( A Torres Strait Islander and Tongan storyletter. They descend from the Zagareb and Dauareb tribes. ) My name was my name before I walked among the living before I could breathe before I had lungs to fill before my great grandmother passed and everyone was left to grieve My name was birthed from a dream A whisper from gods to a king A shout into the stars that produced another that shone as bright They held me without being burnt, humming lullabies in pidgin My name was passed down from my ancestors They acknowledged my roots grew in two places So, they ripped my name from the ocean and mixed it into the bloodlines of my totems My name has survived the destruction of worlds and the genocidal rebirthing of so-called ones It’s escaped the overwhelmed jaw of the death bringer Many a time It has survived the conflicts that r...
Read more

Tragic Optimism

Image
Tragic Optimism...there it is, another one of those paradoxical couplings! But it speaks to me somehow, resonates really, as our time of disorientation and disillusion continues in lengths for which we have no comparison. Except perhaps in history as in slavery or holocaust or the Bible as in the Exodus! Tragic optimism is a term coined by Victor Frankl which came to life after 9/11 when research on resilience found a strange and strong meaning in these words, a synergism in their inherent tension. While telling similar stories and confessing similar emotions that which separated the resilient from the not so resilient was a capacity to make tragically optimistic meaning of the horrific event, to acknowledge pain and tragedy while holding hope, the thing which does not disappoint, the thing with feathers! Tragic optimism then seems to be much like the Christian virtue which Jesus modeled of holding sorrow and love gently together. It is a healthier psychological framework of...
Read more

What is in the Waiting?

Image
“ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope” Psalm 130:5 What is waiting, besides you and me, in this time of isolation? Much has been written about what we will do when we are sprung! Haircuts, restaurant visits, gyms, hugs, jobs, in church worship, book group actual gatherings, ...just to name a few of the things for which we are waiting. But what is waiting for our attention differently; what have we learned? What is in the waiting? Is there a spirituality of waiting?   Waiting on God is a favorite topic for many mystics. It might be wondrous and contemplative. But during this time of Covid 19 waiting is more often than not connected to anxiety and fear. We wait for results, we wait for financial news, we wait for cures.   Much has been collapsed into the phrase, “I cannot wait to get back to normal!” To which I respond: Wait! What!? When confronted with this kind of waiting or any translation of waiting which aligns it with “norm...
Read more