"IT IS FINISHED." No, it isn't!

Evangelist's Re-Creation story, like the first Creation story, climaxes with the events of a sixth day.

Just as God was said to have made the world over the course of a holy week, so Jesus is said to have reconciled, redeemed, and remade the world by what he did through six days of the Church's Holy Week.

And at the end of both weeks, God the creator and God the re-creator declare the work as "finished", done, and God the creator and God the re-creator go into Sabbath, the Rest, that marks the seventh day.

"IT IS FINISHED." No, it isn't.

We know that first story is only the beginning, the Genesis, of creation. Likewise, the Good Friday story far from completes God's work in the world.

It would be wonderful if this were a "commemorative occasion" for the church: if, as we sometimes will, we were gathering today to celebrate the anniversary of something that happened long ago and far away.

But there is a Real Presence in today's gathering and liturgy; there is a immediacy to this story that brings it here and now.

Whoever it was that wrote a letter long ago entitled simply "To the Hebrews," - bearing no delivery address, nor any signature - wrote about the "once and for all" nature of what Jesus did on Good Friday.

The readers, "the Hebrews" would have known about sacrificial gifts, about offerings of life and blood to the un-nameable and unknowable God.

So that letter-writer declared the superiority of the offering of "Christ the victim, Christ the priest," as the hymn lyric reads.

What Jesus did, what Jesus offered was "once and for all," because of its unquestionable purity and unarguable totality.

And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins.

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, "he sat down at the right hand of God," and since then has been waiting "until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet."

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

"IT IS FINISHED."

But no, it isn't.

It would be wonderful if we could honestly look at the empty crosses with which our churches are adorned and say, "Thank you, Jesus, for all you said and did that long Friday outside Jerusalem's western wall."

Thirty-some years of life, thirty-some months of teaching and preaching and loving, six intense days climaxing in six hours on a cross, and "It is finished!"

"The Strife is O'er, the Battle Done, the Victory of Life is Won!"

It would be wonderful, but no, it isn't finished at all.

Look around and you will see that not all the crosses in all our churches are empty.

Many still bear the broken body of Jesus, and the honest observance of this day we call "Good Friday" includes veneration of a hard-wood cross on which we must acknowledge our Lord still hangs, on which our Lord still suffers, on which our Lord still dies.

Because when you look around you will see that not all the crosses in our world are empty, either.

We look to a God who entered human history.

But unlike the stories of ancient gods and goddesses who were said briefly to have sampled human life, out of curiosity, or boredom, or sympathy; the God to whom we look with worship becomes fully human while yet fully divine; who comes "to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us."

And, through a mystery we call resurrection, continues to embrace that humanity for all time.

Jesus continues to live, we proclaim in our Easter faith, and with that we must also proclaim that Jesus continues to die.

Come Sunday, some of us will be joining in a hymn that will have us singing about how

"Lent's long shadows have departed."

This Lent has had cast over it the particular and very dark shadow of war.

Vividly before us as we have gathered weekly and prayed daily, examining our lives and confessing our sins, has been the acute need this world has for God.

Though I sincerely doubt there has ever been a Lenten season in the church's history that has passed without there being a war somewhere, this year we have not been able to avoid the sad truth that the human family is a dysfunctional family.

During the opening battles of a world war sixty years ago, theologian Reinhold Neibuhr wrote about human nature and reminded us all that no matter what heights there are to which we might aspire, there are equal depths to which we might, and will, sink.

No matter how good we think we're becoming, we can and will perpetrate just as much evil.

Over a decade ago, in an attempt to stop another war, a street war in Los Angeles, Rodney King asked, "Can't we all just get along?"

And the answer is, "No."

Human lives are taken by other human lives every day; anger explodes into violence and brutality again and again; power contests with power, as well as with the powerless; and plowshares are melted down again and again to be forged into swords.

And the God who lives for us in Jesus Christ is thus still crucified: as any of these his sisters and brothers are made to suffer, no matter how righteous the cause might sound or how unavoidable the suffering might seem, he suffers still, as well.

Our churches are stripped and shrouded today.

We gather to acknowledge that Christ's crucifixion is not a "long ago and far away" happenstance that we gather simply to commemorate.

We are here to tell ourselves that he is being crucified today both outside and inside city walls around the world, and we are hear to confess and lament that truth.

And yet we call it "Good" Friday.

That first creation story, in Genesis, has as its daily refrain "That's good!"

God looks back at the close of the sixth day of the holy week in which the world is made to say "It's done, and it's good. It's very good."

At the end of the sixth day of his Holy Week, God-with-us, Jesus Christ, lifts his head one last time before going into his Sabbath rest to say "It is finished,"and we name this Friday's work "Good" as well.

John's account of the Passion keeps telling us that Jesus took up his cross and went willingly to Skull Hill.

No matter what the religious or political authorities might have thought that Holy Week, the choice to suffer and die was his, not theirs.

And in taking on all the indignation and humiliation, the betrayals, denials, and abandonment, and the pain inflicted on his body and his heart, his engagement with human life becomes complete, leaving no realm of human experience untouched.

Here at All Saints, hanging behind the pulpit, ever looking over the shoulder of the preacher, is our parish crucifix.

Alongside the Risen Christ of Word and Sacrament, the suffering and dying Jesus is always with us.

Look closely, when you see it next, or look closely at many crosses that uphold our Passionate Lord, and notice his right hand.

If you put pressure in the center of a person's palm, at that point where Jesus' nails are traditionally shown to be, or if you press down on the muscles along someone's wrist, where we are told nails of crucifixion were in fact most likely driven, watch as that person's fingers are drawn into a claw-like position.

Jesus' crucified hands are semi-clenched as well, except for the index and middle fingers of that right hand.

Often they are shown as still extended, the hand thus held up by the nail in a perpetual sign, the priestly sign, of blessing.

As in his crucifixion, suffering, and dying, our Lord joins himself to all human crucifixions: all suffering and dying, he also brings his blessing, the blessing of his presence and his love.

In his dying breath on that first Good Friday's cross, Jesus' work of re-creation is not finished.

What is finished is God's affixing firmly, once and for all time, the very real and transforming presence of Jesus' Life and Love to human suffering and sin.

The wounded, constricted hands of God are once and for all stretched out and willingly nailed on the hard wood of the cross to embrace, bless, and begin the healing of the world's brokenness.

Like the Suffering Servant about which Isaiah wrote, it is what God's love calls him to do, to lay down his life for God's Beloved.

It is now our work as his servants to continue with him.

The need for God is still very much with us, and this Good Friday a war and the as-yet-to be revealed consequences of that war are bringing the message very close to home.

May the unfinished but continuing work of lifting high the cross on which Jesus is still hanged, to revealing the never-failing love of God firmly fixed to our broken lives, be that to which we penitently re-commit ourselves and our ministries this Holy Week and Eastertide.