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Reflections on the Seven Words of Jesus from the Cross: 6 It is finished

When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19.30 (https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)
Like ‘I thirst’, ‘It is finished’ is another apparently simple statement. But, of course, it’s capable of two interpretations. 
John’s Gospel doesn’t include Jesus’ desolate cry that he’d been forsaken by God. ‘It is finished,’ could be an alternative translation - into Greek and English - of Jesus’ original words in Aramaic. 
If this were the case then it would mean Jesus’ ministry was ‘finished’ in the sense that cornered people, who’ve run out of road to flee along, might say, ‘We’re finished!’ The only options remaining in that situation are death or dishonour, and Jesus chooses death, which is - in most circumstances - the ultimate end to any project. A cause really is finished when the person who was leading it is killed and his followers are dispersed. A cause is completely finished when it seems to have been abandoned even by God.
But whatever Jesus meant when he said, ‘It is finished,’ this isn’t how John interprets those words. He tells us that Jesus knew that ‘already everything had been brought to perfection’ when - to make perfect the many allusions to scripture in the story of how he’d died - he called out for a drink. Having satisfied his thirst he said, ‘It is finished,’ meaning ‘It is perfected’ or ‘accomplished’ or ‘complete’, a bit like someone triumphantly inserting the last piece into a particularly challenging jigsaw puzzle.
‘It is finished’ means ‘I have done it!’ and safe in this knowledge Jesus ‘bowed his head and gave up his spirit.’
'This is  the end!' Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer told his cellmates when two Gestapo officers came to escort him to the gallows, 'For me the beginning of life!'

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