Category : Radio
4
Date : 29.03.2004
Printable version
Sunday 4 April, 5.40-5.55pm, 麻豆官网首页入口 Radio 4
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is
the final speaker in this year's Lent Talks, reflecting
on the words of Jesus as he died: 'It is finished'.
Dr Williams considers the difference that can be made by a couple of
words: 'It's all over' as opposed to 'It's all done'.
He says: "When St John tells us that Jesus died saying, 'It's finished'
we may find it natural at first to hear it as if it was 'It's all over'.
After all, this is a death, a terrible death, a death in what looks
like defeat and loneliness.
"But in the context of the whole gospel of John, it's very plain
that we should be hearing, 'It's all done'. This death is not just a
'passion', something that is suffered or endured. It's an action, an
action that completes a life's work."
In his final words, Jesus conveys the central good news of Christianity.
The world is changed forever by Jesus' death and, Dr Williams says,
"His resurrection spells out how it is changed, how God's glory and
love have come to live in our physical world, our physical bodies."
This ending is really a beginning, a moment of the utmost creativity,
not passivity.
"Here is a moment of human humiliation and apparent divine absence
that is, in reality, the point where radiance transfigures humanity
and God is more intensely at work, more fully present, than in any other
moment in human history."
