LAST WORDS IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

Last words are very important to many of us. They provide closure.

Famous last words include: “Jesus, I love you,” by Mother Teresa; “It is very beautiful over there,” by Thomas Edison; “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP [live long and prosper]!,”by Leonard Nimoy in his final tweet.

As of the end of March 2023, close to seven million people have died from COVID-19. Unfortunately, because of the protocols in 2020 and 2021, most of them--family, friends, colleagues--died alone, separated from us. Our last conversation, our last communication, our last text message--our last moments with them have taken on a more special meaning.

 Of course, the most famous last words ever recorded would be Jesus’ Last Words as found in the gospels: Mark has one. Matthew has one. Luke has three; and John has three. Many among us grew up with the traditional, harmonized version of Jesus's final words. “The Seven Last Words” as part of the church’s Lenten Tradition was started by Jesuits in Peru in the 17th. 

If we read our Bibles and pray every day, we will grow, grow, grow in the realization that the Gospel of John celebrates the discipleship of the unnamed.

In other words, the most faithful and effective followers of Jesus in the story have no names. The Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well, who engages Jesus in a dialogue of equals and runs to her people to share her experience with him, is unnamed. The young child who offers the five loaves and two fish so that Jesus can feed over five thousand people is also unnamed. The beloved disciple who plays a role bigger than Peter’s in the story is also unnamed. But most important of all, the only disciple who we find at the beginning and at the end of Jesus’s life is also unnamed: Jesus’s mother.

We find the two—Jesus’s mother and the beloved disciple—at the foot of the cross. Jesus says to them, “Woman behold your son; behold your mother.” Jesus asks that his two faithful disciples take care of each other. Love is the key theme of the Gospel of John. God became human because of love. The world is supposed to be blessed by our love for each other. Jesus in the Gospel of John leaves his followers only one commandment— greater love hath no one than this, that one offers one’s life for another. Mothers behold your sons; sons behold your mothers; parents behold your children; children behold your parents. We are members of the family of God and our primary task is to live in love for each other, like a family: each one willing to offer one’s life for the other. Each one willing to offer one’s life especially for those we do not consider our sisters and brothers or members of God’s family.

Then Jesus says, “I thirst.” Again, in the Johannine story, particularly in his conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus is the Living Water. Thus, many people find it puzzling that the one who says he is Living Water is suddenly thirsty. And he is given vinegar by his executioners.

 "I thirst” represents a quote from the Hebrew Bible--Psalm 69. Faith draws strength from the past. Like Daniel’s three friends who faced death yet believed in a God who will deliver them as God has delivered in the past, Jesus affirms the same unwavering faith in a deliverer God. And God did deliver Daniel’s three friends. And God delivered David (who wrote the Psalm). And Jesus believed God will deliver him, as well.

Then Jesus says, “It is finished.” The End. Jesus is dead: a victim of the horrors of torture, abuse, and state-sanctioned execution.

Remember the only commandment Jesus left his followers in the Gospel of John—greater love hath no one than this, that one offers one’s life for another? Jesus does exactly that. His life was an offering. And we are challenged to do the same. Jesus’s work is finished. Ours is not!  Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Jesus… We are asked the same thing. Do we really love Jesus? Can we love as Jesus loved? His last words on the cross affirmed his faith in God, in people, in the transforming power of love and life, and empowered him to face a very violent death.

His last words on the cross affirmed a conviction that goodness will always conquer evil, that faith is stronger than fear, that hope is stronger than despair, that love is more powerful than indifference, and that life will always, always, conquer death.

My friends, last words are very important to us. They provide closure. Jesus’s last words serve as a challenge for us who are left behind to continue the work that God has begun. 

My hope is that they inspire us to dedicate our lives to bring about a future where God’s gift of resurrection will come without peoples and communities suffering the violence, the humiliation, and the torture of crucifixions. I pray you share this hope.

*art, "Cristo Nego," Martin Ruiz Anglada (1995) from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.