The Seventh Word from the Cross
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Luke 23.46
Cardinal basil Hume begins his meditation on this last of the last words in this way:
One of the greatest privileges a Christian minister can have is to be with someone when they are dying, and to say over them the prayers of Preparation for Death on p.454 of the Book of Common Prayer. I remember vividly saying them with the late, great Derrick Bingham, who specifically asked me to testify to his knowledge of the Lord in his dying. As he held a clutching cross, which I had given him, I prayed these words:
And then I read the last verse of a Good Friday hymn, ‘O sacred head’:
This is the moment when Jesus breathes his last, the moment when the Christ–candle is extinguished in the Tenebrae. But it is more than a moment of resignation, which is so often our interpretation of this ‘word’. Bishop William Willimon puts it like this:
Interestingly, he cries out this word with a loud voice, as the curtain of the temple is torn in two. This word is just as strong and just as excruciating as ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ It is not an easy word – it is a tough word. It is not a word of weak resignation; it is a word of strong determination. Why? Well, it is obvious when you think about it. What was he about to do? He was about to harrow hell! That’s the bit of the Holy week story we easily forget. We think nothing happens on Easter Eve, but in fact a great deal happens out of sight of this world. 1 Peter 3:18f tells us the story. Jesus Christ was ‘put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he also made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey.’
Jesus has a task to fulfil: to go into the depths of Hades and to proclaim the gospel to those who lived before the cross and who also needed his salvation. So important is this, that it is found in even the brief Apostles’ Creed: ‘he descended into hell’.
So what Jesus is saying in this last of the seven words: ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ is something like this: My life is not mine, it is yours, father. My rights are not my possession, I submit them to you. My choices are determined by your will. My future is not my future; it is in your hands. I freely and wholeheartedly yield everything to your disposal. And he descends to Hades to complete his work.
Bishop William Willimon reminds all of us, who may be tempted to think we are in charge of our lives, that ‘death is the ultimate rip–off, the ultimate reminder that our vaunted boasts about self–determination are delusions.’ Surely we can have no better words at our last hour than those of Jesus from Psalm 31: ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’, and those of us who say Compline will know the completion of that verse, ‘For thou hast redeemed us, O Lord, thou God of truth.’