LENT 2025 – PART SIX

FATHER, INTO YOUR HANDS

 Each gospel has its unique take on the life and ministry of Jesus. In this week’s penultimate episode, we read Luke’s gospel. Interestingly, all the gospels say that at the end, just as he died, Jesus shouted something, but they report different things that he shouted, so we assume he said all three, but Bible commentators are not quite sure in what order he said them. In John’s gospel, the word is: It is finished; in Matthew and Mark, the word is the cry of dereliction: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But here in Luke 23:44, it is this statement of faith and confidence:

  It was about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until 3:00 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.

 Seeing what had happened, the centurion praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man!” And when all the people who had gathered to witness the sight saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away, but all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.

 The festive crowd and carnival atmosphere are gone after the 3 hours of darkness and Jesus’ loud faith-filled cry. The onlookers return home in a sombre mood, somehow unhinged by all they witnessed and heard. Luke writes that they beat their breasts as if they recognized that some horrible miscarriage of justice had happened. Similarly, the Roman centurion acknowledged publicly that Jesus was a righteous man.

The last breath of Jesus is described in Greek as phone megale, which means voice loud. We get our English word megaphone from these two words and it suggests an amplified voice. It is as if there was some divine majesty in what Jesus summoned and it really scared all those who stood close by.

 In this final prayer of Jesus, He again addresses His Father and again quotes from a Psalm. Psalm 31:5 reads, Into your hands I commit my spirit; redeem me, Lord, my faithful God… as for me, I trust in the Lord. I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul. Jesus is so saturated with the Word, particularly the Psalms, that these words come readily to his lips even in these extreme circumstances.

 With this, He is saying that He is fulfilling Scripture and that his death has been part of God’s plan since before the foundation of the world. The fact that he seemed to die so willingly, that he seemed to be so in control, that he seemed to have so much confidence in his Father to whom he is commending his spirit must have made a profound impression on the onlookers and is partly why the soldier said: This looks like a righteous man to me.

 Many Christians through the centuries have found in Scripture a comfort in their last hour, either memorized and spoken by them or read to them by those nearby, and here, in his sixth word from the cross, Jesus models that for us. For Him, death was not a leap into the void; it was not just a journey into nothingness in spite of his earlier cry, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me. Here, He commits Himself to His Father, taking us back to his reassuring words to the thief next to Him – Today you will be with me in paradise.

May we, too, live with this kind of closeness to the Father and be able to pray this prayer, whether we get up in the morning or go to bed at night: Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.

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