FORGIVE THEM
Psalm 31:1-11
Luke 23:26-35
When a person's life has ended, it is natural for us to remember the last words the deceased said to us. This is a means of retaining our kinship with the person and underscoring her importance to us. Although several people may hear the same words, everyone does not remember and recount the same words. This is how it is with the last words of Jesus. Seven statements are attributed to Jesus as having been spoken from the cross. Not one of the Gospel writers recorded all seven statements. Is it any wonder? Consider all that was occurring. Those who had been closest to Jesus seemed far away at this point. It is as if they were going away from the cross looking back over their shoulders. They were drawn to and repulsed from the cross simultaneously. How could they hear anything?
Add to this that it was some time after Jesus’ death that people began remembering and recounting what Jesus said. Then, it was many years after that, forty or fifty years or more, before anyone attempted to write down what Jesus said. So is it any wonder that we have different writers attributing different words to Jesus as his last words?
The words Jesus spoke from the cross reveal the temptations he experienced in the last hours of his life and how he responded to those temptations. Jesus' last words have multiple meanings and implications for us. They are lasting words not only because they tell us how Jesus died but also because they tell us how to live and how to die. How a person dies is related to how he lives. Never was this more clearly evident than in the living and dying of Jesus. Thus his last words have lasting value for us.
Much earlier, when the disciples had asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he said, "Say, 'Abba.'" Jesus' use of this simple address, "Abba," represented a significant practice and teaching of Jesus. Judaism already used Father as one reference to God, but the direct, warm, personal, childlike address, "Abba," represented something new. Abba is Aramaic for father. This was a child's way of addressing his father, almost like the word, "Pappa." Jesus' address to God as "Abba" (Mark 14:36) was a simple, affectionate approach to God. Such an address reflected the closeness, intimacy and warmth Jesus felt toward God. Jesus knew God in an intimate way and he sought to enable others so to know God in the same way. Thus, Jesus taught his disciples to call upon God in an intimate, personal, affectionate manner.
What Jesus taught, he practiced and experienced himself. Intimacy between persons goes beyond a theoretical discussion; it is a love relationship. This is what Jesus taught in the model prayer in the phrase, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” On another occasion Jesus said that our ability to experience forgiveness is related directly to our ability and willingness to forgive.
There is a story about two friends who were walking through the desert. During the journey they had an argument and one friend slapped the other in the face. The one who was slapped felt hurt, but without saying anything he wrote in the sand: "Today my best friend slapped me in the face." They kept on walking until they found an oasis where they decided to take a bath and rest. The one who had been slapped began to drown and his friend saved him. When he recovered from the ordeal, he wrote on a stone: "Today my best friend saved my life." His friend asked him, "Why, after I hurt you, did you write in the sand and now you write on a stone?" The man, smiling, replied: "When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness can erase it. And when something great happens, we should engrave it on the stone of the memory of our heart, where no wind can erase it."
Jesus taught his disciples to be able to relate to God as a loving parent as a natural outgrowth of an intimate love relationship with God. Jesus had nurtured the intimate relationship that had begun early in his life when he said, "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?" (Lk. 2:49) He found that relationship to be sustaining. At his baptism he experienced the acceptance and approval of God: "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased" (Mk. 1:11).
God was with Jesus in childhood, at his baptism, in the wilderness, in his ministry, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane is evidence that Jesus prayed like he taught his disciples to pray. There, in the agony of decision‑making, he put words to his struggle and it came out, "Abba, I pray this cup might pass from me” (Mark 14:36).
It should not surprise us that Jesus' first last word is addressed to God but it does. Perhaps it is the rapid chain of events between communicating with God in the garden and talking to God from the cross that shocks us. Think of the intensity of life for Jesus during the twelve‑hour period preceding his crucifixion. He had gone to supper with friends, relived the Exodus of his people, agonized in prayer, was betrayed, arrested, denied, tried, condemned, and walked up the hill to his death. With his body still aching from the scourging and the jar of dropping the cross in place, with death imminent, Jesus called out to God. Jesus' life is evidence that the attitude a person has about life and living contributes significantly to his attitude about death and dying. The relationship Jesus had with God sustained him in his living and under girded him in his dying.
The real jolt in Jesus' prayer from the cross was not Jesus saying “Father.” The real jolt was Jesus praying, "Forgive them." Who did he want forgiven? "Them" was inclusive. Jesus must have been including the people who watched, the rulers who scoffed, the soldiers who gambled, and the disciples who scattered. But how could he ask forgiveness for those who turned him in, for those who did him in, for those who left him alone, and for those who cheered on the executioners?
How could he pray, "Forgive them"? Perhaps, because, in Gethsemane, he had prayed for himself and found resolution for the turmoil, agony, and struggle within himself, so that now he could pray for others, "Forgive them." But these words were shocking. They were so shocking that the early church could not endure the memory of them and dropped them. Several of the important, early manuscripts did not record these words.3 The words were too difficult for the early church. For a man being crucified to cry, "Forgive them," was just too much.
Some early Christians could not stand Jesus forgiving some religious and political leaders this way. In Acts 4:10 in the second and third centuries some Roman and Jewish leaders were being accused of the crucifixion of Jesus which may explain why some of the earliest manuscripts do not have Jesus offering this forgiveness. However, the persecuted church let these words stand in the best manuscripts. Many preferred revenge to reconciliation. There were those in the church in the early years who did not want Jesus forgiving fellow Jewish leaders, Roman politicians and soldiers, Samaritans, criminals, prostitutes, or tax collectors. This is so contemporary. There are those today who don't like Jesus being so forgiving. But, the church let the words stand in the best manuscripts, for these words say something radically significant about Jesus and those who follow him.
When Jesus cried, "Forgive them," he sided with people and we are to do the same. There is a powerful dialogue in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. The plot concerns a black family in the depths of poverty. The father has died and the family is expecting $10,000 from the life insurance policy. The mother wants to use some of the money to make a down payment on a house and use some of it to help with her daughter's college education who wants to be a doctor. The son wants to use the money to invest in a liquor store so they can get rich quick. The mother gives the money to the son to take to the bank until they can find a house. He gives the money to an acquaintance to invest in the liquor story. The acquaintance skips town with the money.
After a heated exchange with her mother the daughter replies: "Be on my side for once! You saw what he did. . . Wasn't it you who taught me--to despise any man who would do that?"
The mother answers: "Yes--I taught you that. Me and your daddy. But I thought I taught you something else too. . . I thought I taught you to love him."
"Love him," the daughter screams. "There is nothing left to love."
Then the mother utters these memorable lines: "There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning--because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”
Jesus was a master at that. Having sought to build a bridge to people throughout his ministry, Jesus continued his work of reconciliation even when the worst was done to him. In an early chapter of Matthew, Jesus joined people in need, adding his strength to theirs, "seeing them with every illness and disease, he was moved with compassion!" (Matthew 9:35‑36) Later, he wept for Jerusalem. In this cry, "Forgive them," he joined Jerusalem. When Jerusalem would not come to him, he went to Jerusalem. By going to Jerusalem, he stepped over the wall that separated, and demonstrated how far the love of God extended. Even at the very doorway of death, Jesus expressed this love. His expression was not a live‑and‑let live philosophy nor an insipid let bygones be bygones. Neither did Jesus mean forgetting and smiling, nor understanding and saying, "They are worth it." Jesus was offering forgiveness, not sentimentality.
Why was Jesus requesting forgiveness for those who were not seeking it themselves? When a wrong is done, the wrongdoer has separated himself from the one wronged. Strange as it seems, the quickest and healthiest forgiveness occurs when the one wronged initiates reconciliation. This is paradox. Jesus embraced those who were doing him in when he prayed, "Father, forgive them." Even in this darkest hour Jesus chose to light the candle of reconciliation rather than to curse the darkness of injustice. Jesus' approach was a great reversal. He offered forgiveness to people who had not repented because he saw forgiveness fueling repentance rather than repentance igniting forgiveness.
There are yet more words in these first of the last words of Jesus. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing." Does this confirm that ignorance is bliss? Are people better off not knowing? Was Jesus saying that people are better off not knowing because they are unaccountable for what they do not know? God forbid! Whether the unknowing or misknowing or not knowing be a circumstantial ignorance, as with the soldiers, or a judicial ignorance, for which some were responsible, or a willful ignorance, as with us, the pathos of the situation here is that all are what Nicholas of Cusa called doctors of ignorance.4 Have not all of us received our Ph.D.'s in not knowing? When Jesus cried, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do," he expressed his desire for people to be forgiven, whatever their condition. They did not have to go to him first; he came to them. Forgiveness fuels repentance. Thus, he prayed for the watching crowd, the gambling soldiers, the scoffing leaders, and the scattering disciples when he prayed to God, “Forgive them." We also are watchers, gamblers, and scoffers about whom he spoke and for whom he pled, "Dear God, forgive all of these who have their Ph.D's in unknowing." Before we realize our need for forgiveness, God already is seeking to forgive us. No one is excluded from God's forgiveness. In the life and death of Jesus, Jesus demonstrated that God is on our side.
Jesus died as he lived. He taught his followers to pray, "Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6:12). Jesus said to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven you." The same Jesus responded to the adulteress, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." And to Zacchaeus, "Come down from your perch and let's have lunch together"(AT). It was Jesus who said, "Happy are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy." "Turn the other cheek." "Go the second mile." "Give your cloak and coat as well." "Pray for your enemies. Do good to those who hate you" (AT). Thus, the first of his last words gave expression to the attitude he had toward life and living, toward death and dying. He took his stand with humanity. Here he can be seen for who he is. He is the one who shows us that God is on our side.
People can return the favor by joining him, or they can gamble for the leftovers. There are people who have been attending churches for years who go out taking all they brought with them. They have come to the drama to observe, to watch. They have resisted in every way becoming a participant in this drama of dramas, the drama of forgiveness and redemption. They go out taking all they brought. They go out, "part his raiment and cast lots." This last word of Jesus, "Father, forgive them," is lost on them. They go out not knowing what they are doing.
Is this last word lost on us? Do we know what we are doing? Forgiveness is a powerful, essential force in building and maintaining relationships. Will the lasting power of forgiveness become an integral part of the way we relate to others? When someone hurts us, we should write it in the sand where the winds of forgiveness can erase it. That is how God treats us and it is the way Jesus modeled for us to live. Will we live that way? Will we forgive those who have wronged us, whoever they are? We have been forgiven. Will we forgive in kind?