"It is Finished: The Cry of Integrity"

Imani Community Church, April 2, 1999
Rev. Chuck Freeman

"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper."

"The people stood by watching; but the rulers scoffed at him saying; "He saved others, let him save himself; if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!" (Luke 23:35)

Three words. "It is finished."(John 19:30) All is told in the tone, a life is summed up in the inflection. Did Christ's world end in a whimper as the verse of T.S. Eliot infers? Or, were these words breathed in deep, everlasting satisfaction? How were they pronounced?

Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson writes that in the final stage of living when death is imminent, we face an evaluation of how we have conducted our life. We answer this inquiry with a feeling of integrity or despair.

This is the moment of reckoning, when the chickens come home to roost; when the cock crows.

Despair expresses the sentiment that time is short, too short for the attempt to start another life, and to try out alternate roads to integrity.

Such despair is a show of disgust with oneself for not having allied ourselves with the vision of a superior life, which now only signifies self-contempt.

T. S. Eliot graphically captures this loathing in "The Hollow Men."

"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas! Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quite meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar.

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."

Conversely, integrity is the naturally ripened fruit of a life well lived. Its sweet juice is now ready to be enjoyed, as one reflects on an integrated life faithful to the qualities of goodness and decency; a life spent in loving service to the dignity of all beings.

Now, an informed concern with life itself, flourishes in the face of death itself.

The story of Jesus is one of embodied integrity. It is boldly manifested in his revolutionary declaration; " I and the Father are one." (John 17:22)

The genius of Jesus Christ was in his singular dedication to radical listening. His being resonated with one sound; to that still, small voice of the One who sent him.

Jesus, "your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you. But he said to them, 'My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." (Luke 8:20)

You see, he gave heed not to his Momma or his Daddy, not to his brother or his sister, not to his Church, the Governor, the Professor, not to the Preacher, the Pharisee, the Sadducee or the Wannabe.

When it came to his calling, his mission, his sacred business, Jesus' passions were tuned to one voice, and one voice only, the promptings of the Great I Am!

The Apostle Paul shows he is in the lineage of Jesus with this tearful profession before the Ephesian elders; "I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus." (Acts 20:24)

If this Good Friday is to be transformed into Easter in the crucible of your being, take Jesus' words and deeds at face value; not as an example to be followed, but as the authentic courage to be, moment by moment.

Hear and do the word of God with the fervor Theodore Roosevelt defiantly prescribes; "The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends themselves in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of highest achievement; and at worst, if they fail, at least fails while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." (Adapted)

The measure you give will be the measure you get. When the hour of departure beckons you, what will the character or your voice reveal? Will you utter the whimpering words of despair; "It is finished." Or, instead will you shout the cry of confident integrity, "IT IS FINISHED!!"