Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
The Gospel of Luke
It takes a certain kind of strength and faithfulness not to just skip Good Friday. I am constantly surprised at how many of my flock can’t make it. When I was in South Carolina at a little church, I would sit in silence for the three hours that Jesus hung on the cross and there would be one person with me at times, sometimes no one. So many people don’t want to think about the pain that Jesus endured, about the death that he suffered. It is just too raw, too difficult. So we get busy. We just can’t make it. Just take me straight to Easter, I don’t want the mess. It’s too hard to look at death in the face. Only certain people have the strength and you, my friends, are among them.
Jesus spoke only seven times during the three hours that he hung on the cross. Physicians who have researched what happened to his body as it was being crucified conclude that Jesus suffocated. Fluid would have slowly filled his lungs. He also could have bled to death. We are not sure which of these two led to his death. But we do know that it would have been very painful to speak, especially in a way that could have been heard by those below the cross. So when Jesus spoke, it was important. These words were spoken in agony. Each word cost him precious moments of life. Each word was uttered with enormous effort. And that is why, during the three hours in which Jesus hung on the cross, we meditate on his words. These are not some off the cuff statements that Jesus made. These words ate up his oxygen, accelerated his dying. These were intentional and costly words.
Jesus words are recorded once in Matthew and Mark, three times in Luke and three times in John. It is not clear in what precise order they occurred, since different phrases are recorded in different gospels, but each year we do our best to place them in some kind of chronological order.
In the Lucan account, Jesus’ first words are Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
Have you ever been in excruciating pain? Have you ever broken a bone or given birth to a child, cut yourself to the bone or thrown out your back? Most of us have endured some kind of extreme physical pain at some point in our lives and we recognize that one of the most evident features of pain is how all consuming it is. When you are in excruciating pain, there is nothing else that seems to matter. It is a state of extreme self-absorption. When I am in pain, I cannot think of the needs of the world or the desires of my friends, all that absorbs my mind is processing the pain. It fills my consciousness and there is not room for anything else.
Jesus was able to think of others in the midst of physical agony. He was not concerned for himself, his thoughts were on us. And that in and of itself is a miracle. He was so selfless, so loving that even agonizing pain could not make him forget his love for the human race.
And even if we put aside the physical pain for a moment, what about the mental pain? Jesus is in the pit of despair. He is dying. He has any and every right to be totally and completely self-absorbed. Talk about an opportunity to feel sorry for yourself! I would have milked it for all its worth. But he does not let this complete injustice make him self-absorbed. His first words are not for himself. He is not thinking about his pain or his death or even how unfair all of this is. He does not beg for mercy or to come down. He thinks of Us!
Jesus is concerned that God will not forgive us for crucifying him. He begs for God’s forgiveness. Sucking in each agonizing breath, he begs not for himself but for us.
I don’t know about you but I spend an awful lot of time thinking about myself. The intensity of my self-absorption only seems to increase when I am suffering. All I want to do is to feel better. Jesus was not that way. He was so in love with us that he could not stop thinking about us, even when his lungs were filling up with fluid, even when he could not breathe.
It is also a human tendency to demonize the one that commits violence to you. The one who hurts you is not a person. It is easier to commit a crime when you do not think of the person that you are hurting. Better that they are a spectacle, an event, not a human being.
A college student named Jane was walking through campus at night when she was grabbed from behind. Her assailant dragged her into the woods and began to rip off her clothing. Instead of fighting him, she kept looking into his eyes and saying, “I am Jane. My name is Jane. What is your name? My name is Jane. Are you OK?…”
As she was telling his over and over again that she was a person. And he stopped. He realized that he was hurting a person. He let her go. She began to help him get off drugs and they became friends.
Otis Gray was a chaplain during World War I. He brought communion to the soldiers daily. He counseled them amidst the horror of a kind of war none of them had ever seen before. He held boys as they died. He watched others gun down young men who were so close that you could see the fear in their eyes. He lived in the midst of hell. And he tried to bring God into the lives of these men who saw nothing but violence.
Otis had a good friend, a young man who was also from Kansas. The young man told Otis that if he got out of the war alive, he would start a church with Otis Gray. Together, they would start a church in Kansas.
In the mist of one of the worst battles on the fields of France, Otis found himself in a ditch along with his soldiers. They were ordered to run into the no man’s land between themselves and the Germans. The boy from Kansas climbed out of the ditch and began shooting. Otis watched as his young friend was gunned down. He watched as the boys body hit the ground. And, at that moment, he had to make a spit decision.
It came from deep inside. It was not a decision that could have been justified with words. It was just a gut level decision. Otis climbed out of the no man’s land and went to the boy. Seeing that the boy was alive, he gave him communion. And then, he carried his friend to safety.
They both survived the war and started a church together. It is called St. James Episcopal Church. But to this day, the people of that church say that the worship began that day so long ago, on the fields of France, when one man was able to put another man’s life ahead of his own. When someone, for just a moment, became a true servant of Christ.
That is all that we can hope for, really. For moments of time when we are able to leave our self-centered notions behind and see through Jesus’ eyes. And see the pain and the ignorance and the needs of so many people for God and for forgiveness. When Jesus said that the people did not know what they were doing in crucifying him, he was right. We had stopped seeing him as a person. But he never stopped seeing us.
When Jesus looked out across the place of the skull, he saw people who needed God. He saw people who were lost and had no idea what they were doing. He saw you and he saw me. He saw all our stupidity and all our mistakes. And he wanted us to be forgiven. He wanted us to be saved.
And he hopes for us still.
Never has there been another human being who was so selfless, so giving. We can never be as loving as Christ, but we can move a step closer. We can step out and introduce ourselves to people in pain, we can think about the needs of others. We can try to know what we are doing.
