Lord Byron was a truly great English poet, but when it came time for him to die, he said, quite simply, "Now I shall go to sleep. Good night."

Those were his not-so-famous last words.

If truth be told, the final words of history's great players are rarely inspiring, and they are usually about as interesting and uplifting as a phone book. According to an article in the Utne Reader, we tend to expect pearls of profundity from our expiring artists, philosophers, and world leaders, but what we get are dry-as-dust clichés.

Mexican revolutionary hero "Pancho" Villa uttered to a comrade: "Don't let it end this way. Tell them I said something."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe couldn't do better than "Open the second shutter so that more light may come in." Apparently, his editors found these words to be so dismally dull that they trimmed the sentence down to the inspirational phrase, "More light!"

Marie Antoinette, the doomed Queen of France, was clumsy but polite. She said, "Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur" ... after stepping on her executioner's toe.

For pure entertainment value, you can't beat the last words of condemned prisoners, especially if you have a taste for graveyard humor. A criminal named James Roges was asked by the firing squad commander if he had a last request. "Why yes," said the clever convict. "A bulletproof vest!"

And you've got to feel some admiration for a condemned murderer who can continue to crack jokes from the electric chair. "How about this for a headline in tomorrow's paper," a man named James French said. "French … Fries!" (Christopher Orlet, "Famous Last Words," Utne Reader, July-August 2002, 42-43)

This Holy Week, we remember the famous last words of another condemned man, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. His final utterances are not dry-as-dust, boring, or funny ... but are profound. They are entirely consistent with the society-shaking, history-changing, God-revealing course of his entire ministry.

In fact, his last words are the crowning moment of his life. As recorded in the Gospel of John, his final words are not cries of desperation. Instead, they are words of triumph.

" Woman, here is your son," says Jesus to his mother. "Here is your mother," he says to a disciple standing beside her (John 19:26-27).

" I am thirsty," Jesus cries (v. 28).

" It is finished," he proclaims (v. 30).

These are his last words, his famous last words. But for many people, their meaning is about as clear as mud. What do they mean, really? And how can it be said that they are profound, triumphant, and consistent with the course of his ministry? At first glance, they seem to be as enigmatic as the final words of Henry David Thoreau: "Moose, Indian." Or conductor Leonard Bernstein: "What's this?" Or novelist Victor Hugo: "I see black light."

To understand Christ's parting thoughts, we have to begin with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and look at how Palm Sunday leads straight to Good Friday. According to the Gospel of John, Jesus doesn't begin the week as a superstar and end it as a falling star. Instead, he starts the week in glory, and ends it in even greater glory ... in the shocking, surprising, and scandalous glory of the cross.

But wait a second. The glory … of the CROSS? For many people, this makes about as much sense as "I see black light."

Let's begin at Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem, and the great crowd gathered for the Passover festival takes branches of palm trees and meets him, shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord -- the King of Israel!" And Jesus finds a young donkey and sits on it, fulfilling the prophecy, "Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!" (12:12-15).

So far, so good. Jesus comes to town as the king of Israel. The crowd grasps this and they praise him, praying that he will become their national savior and restore God's kingdom in their country. They are hoping for the kind of liberation that the people of Baghdad experienced this past week when the United States Marines came marching in. The Jerusalem crowd sees that Jesus is a triumphant king -- something that even the disciples are still struggling to grasp -- but of course none of the onlookers has any idea just what KIND of king Jesus has come to be. How quickly they abandon him when they discover that he is not going to knock off the Roman soldiers in the style of coalition forces overpowering the Republican Guard.

Now let's fast-forward to the end of the week. This is where the second half of today's Scripture lesson picks up. And let me just clarify something, so that there is no confusion. Look at the Scripture lessons in your bulletin for one quick second. The people referred to as "they" in chapter 19, verse 16, are not the disciples -- they are the Roman soldiers. I don't want anyone reading our two lessons for today and being led to believe that the disciples crucified Jesus! The disciples may have denied him and betrayed him … but they didn't crucify him!

Here is where most Christians assume that the story takes a turn for the worse: Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested in the garden, put on trial and mocked, and then crucified and killed. But the Gospel of John refuses to portray Jesus as a passive, silent victim, at the mercy of evil forces beyond his control. No, John makes it clear that it is the plan of Jesus -- not the scheme of others -- that leads decisively to his death. He is a victor, not a victim.

This is shocking stuff. It means that the crucifixion has a positive meaning, and that Jesus' famous last words are words of triumph -- not defeat. Biblical scholar Dorothy Jean Weaver points out that Jesus is anything but powerless during Holy Week. He engages in vigorous verbal exchanges -- sharp commands, feisty challenges, penetrating questions, deep observations, and touching words of comfort -- from the moment of his arrest to the final moments in which he hangs on a Roman cross. He orders Peter to put his sword back in its sheath, he challenges the brutality of the high priest's slave, he engages Pontius Pilate in extensive philosophical discourse. On the cross, he offers words of comfort to his mother, and links her to his beloved disciple. (Dorothy Jean Weaver, "John 18:1-19:42," Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, October 1995, 404-408)

Jesus is in control, even from the cross. When he says, in the first of his famous last words, "Woman, here is your son" ... "Disciple, here is your mother," he is creating a new family of God, one that exists even in times of suffering and death. This is truly good news for us, for we are ALL part of this new family created by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus cries, "I am thirsty." This is, for us, a reminder that Jesus entered fully and completely into human life, thirsting and hungering and suffering as each of us does. He certainly felt pain as he went to his death on the cross, and no talk of the positive meaning of Good Friday can eliminate this excruciating reality. But the fresh message for us in this famous last word is that Jesus is WITH us in all of our earthly agony. Nothing in all creation -- neither death, nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, nor anything else we might face -- will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39). Jesus is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, because he has been tested as we are. Since he has walked in our shoes, he knows what we are going through, and can walk beside us on the road to his Father's house. This last word of Jesus matches the mission of his life -- a mission of entering into the very center of our existence, whether we are being challenged by warfare or physical weakness, illness or insecurity, loneliness or a deep sense of personal loss.

Finally, Jesus says, "It is finished" -- probably the most widely misunderstood of his famous last words. This expression is not a whimper of defeat or despair, but a shout of confidence in his completion of God's mission in the world. The word "finished," you see, doesn't mean only " ended" -- it also means "completed." Jesus has now completed God's mission, and completely finished the work God has been calling him to do in the world. When Jesus says that he is finished, he means that he is triumphant!

We have to remember that he knew what his mission was all about. Early in his ministry, Jesus said to Nicodemus, "And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life" (3:14).

It is finished!

Then, a few months before his death, Jesus announced, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (10:11).

It is finished!

And on Palm Sunday, Jesus predicted "when I am lifted up from the earth, [I] will draw all people to myself" (12:32).

It is finished!

With his famous last words on the cross, Jesus completes the mission that God has given him to perform in the world. His death is not a terrible tragedy, nor is it an awful mistake; instead, it is an act of self-sacrifice, one which Jesus performs for the benefit of his followers and all the people of the world. When Jesus is lifted up on the cross, we are able to see, more clearly than ever before, the suffering, self-sacrificing love of God.

So don't let the famous last words of Jesus fool you. They are not mysterious, or tragic, or foolish, or funny. They are not dry-as-dust, uninteresting, or uninspired. Instead, they are shocking, surprising, scandalous and even glorious. They are our Lord's way of communicating one profound but simple truth:

" I love you, to death." That's what the Lord says to each of us: I love you … all the way to death itself. Amen.

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