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Perhaps no scene is more indelibly impressed in the consciousness of western civilization than that of Good Friday. No public execution has ever received more public notice. No so-called incidental death at the hands of the state has ever taken on more significance. And no last words of any death row criminal are better known than these seven last words of Jesus of Nazareth.

This last word from the cross, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," was a nighttime prayer from Psalm 31:5, taught by every Jewish mother to her children. Only a few short years earlier, Mary had tucked the child Jesus into bed, listening tenderly as he commended his spirit to the Heavenly Father's care during the threatening hours of darkness.

And now, at the end of his life at age 33, we might have expected something different from the taunted, mocked, suffering prophet of Galilee. We might have expected cursing the God who seemed to forsake him. We might have expected derisive scorn for all the idealism of political and social reform he once espoused. We might have expected a caustic cynicism and rancid skepticism about the so-called justice of God. But instead, we get this nighttime prayer he learned as a child, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

Public words of public speakers often come back to haunt them. In his famous Sermon on the Mount spoken to thousands, he blessed those who mourn, assuming they would find comfort, a comfort which seemed far removed from him now. He had told the thousands, "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven." Those words must have been haunting him now as he writhed in unspeakable pain at the hands of his persecutors.

And his words to the multitudes of Palestine whom he saw as helpless, neglected sheep without a shepherd? He assured them they were of infinite worth in the eyes of God. Not a sparrow falls, but the Heavenly Father notices, he told them. Every hair of your head is numbered, so how could you feel God has forgotten you, he told the weary peasants.

But just earlier from the cross, the calming words of the Sermon on the Mount seemed to evaporate as he shrieked, "E lo-i, E lo-i, la ma sabach-tha ni" -- "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The earlier assurances of the powerful prophet of Nazareth seemed squeezed from every cell of his body. But yet he prayed his childhood nighttime prayer as the nighttime of death was about to overtake him, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

However, the scene and the mood were radically different from the peaceful childhood bedroom of Nazareth. Luke tells us that earlier in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed so intensely, so agonizingly, that he sweat, as it were, great drops of blood. "Father, if it be thy will, let this cup of suffering pass from me."

Notice, the word is still "Father," not "fate" or "chance" or "brutal indifferent forces" or "vague cosmic force" or "energy of the universe." History is still very personal and God is still very personal, despite the impending mockery, humiliation, and brutal execution.

And now, in these last dying moments on the cross, the word is still "Father," and the utterance is still a prayer in place of curses. The passers-by railed against him, taunting him to save himself and them. The religious leaders, whom you would have expected to be sympathetic, mocked him, saying, "He saved others but cannot save himself. Come down from the cross that we may see and believe," they shouted.

But there were no curses from his mouth. There was no loathing contempt, no self-righteous condescension which sometimes accrues to the falsely accused. There was not even bitter resignation to the "fates." Instead, there was the prayer of faith, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

III.

Thus, in the end, what we have is what God was looking for from the beginning, namely a commendable spirit. If Adam and Eve rebelled in paradise, and if the rebellions and atrocities increased across the centuries in ungodly men and women, in Jesus, the completely obedient Son of God, we have then the reversal of history. In the heights of temptation and in the depths of approaching death, we have in Jesus a spirit commendable to God. In Jesus, we have the Son, who tasted death for everyone, maintaining a commendable spirit.

As Peter's first letter puts it, Jesus "committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted him who judges justly" (1 Peter 2:22-23). Hanging naked before the mob, the last gasps of breath shorter and shorter, the darkness rolling in and out of Jerusalem as his own mind struggled with the darkness of doubt and despair -- hanging naked and alone, Jesus writhed in the crucible of history.

The surging multitudes once singing his praises cursed him now. The women once struggling to touch the hem of his garment to heal their hemorrhages were now revulsed by the blood coagulating on his distended body. And his fair, grand vision of the kingdom of God faded over the horizon of consciousness.

But in the end he did not curse or revile or threaten. Instead, he shouted in a loud voice, shouted his childhood prayer across the centuries, shouted his exemplary affirmation of faith for all who follow him into the worst death has to offer, shouted for all the ages from a commendable spirit, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." And in our hour of death, he bids us pray as he prayed, without bitterness or cursing or reviling, praying loudly or softly, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."