The Seventh Word

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Luke 23:46

This week our reflection on the Seventh (and final) Word is written by Anthony Ho.

Luke 23:44-46

“It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.”

Near the end of this epic story is this surreal moment. The sun stops shining and for three hours it feels like time stands still. The curtain is torn – the barrier between God and man has finally been destroyed – and yet, creation cannot help but rightfully mourn the crucifixion of this righteous man.

At the close of the seven last words, I’m reminded of Jesus’s prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane. In an uncommonly human scene, Jesus pronounces his fear, anguish, and lament before the Father but yet still asks that God’s will take precedent over his own. In a setting similar to that of the fall of man, Jesus, unlike Adam and Eve, chooses to pray repeatedly that his heart be obedient.

Far too often I forget that the actual story of God’s people has been of a benevolent creator requesting obedience from his creation. From God’s calling of Abram out of Ur of the Chaldeans to his willing sacrifice of Isaac, to Saul’s deposition as King of Israel for disobedience, now to Jesus in Gethsemane and his crucifixion on the cross, God’s call for his people has always been towards obedience.

And yet, Jesus’s words on the cross are not from a place of fearful submission but rather abandonment of self-preservation for a deeply rooted trust in God. Despite the horrors that Jesus has already experienced and the impending fear to come, Jesus still refers to God as his beloved Father by whose hands he trusts his deliverance will come.

In the opening chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus opens his ministry by declaring that “the Kingdom of God is at hand!” In my own observation, the use of the word hand (or the imagery of touch) thereafter is an indicator of another glimpse of the Kingdom of God drawing closer. When Jesus heals a man of leprosy with the touch he so desperately longed for, or the bleeding woman reaching to touch Jesus’s garments, or Jairus’s daughter being brought back to life, or Jesus breaking bread to feed the 5000, all of these instances evoke not only the image of God’s benevolent hand but also the Kingdom of God drawing ever nearer. It is into these same hands that Jesus chooses to commit himself, giving both his obedience and his trust. It is to these same acts of obedience and trust that God continues to call his people to as well.

In my pursuit of a career as a physician, I found that obedience and trust in God has led me to opportunities and a vision more wholly myself than I could have achieved on my own. God took a shame-filled college student with failing academic marks and provided the necessary steps and opportunities that not only renewed my confidence in myself but also meticulously demonstrated why and how he had called me to this practice.

In this Lenten season, however, it is ever more apparent that Jesus’s obedience and trust in God meant not only putting off false expectations but becoming more wholly himself, becoming more of the person God had intended for him to become, meant crucifixion on a cross. It is in light of these things that I am reminded of how bold and audacious my vicarious claim to the cross is. While victory over death is of course to be celebrated, for now I am learning to pray and sit underneath the gravity of God’s great love and the heavy weight of the cross. And for now, my heart doesn’t know how to do much else but join in with the rest of creation in mourning that perfection Incarnate’s obedience and trust meant humiliation and death for my sake.