“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Luke 23: 32 – 34.
Introduction
Back
in January, I put together a “preaching plan” for this year. As I was putting this together, I discovered
that today is an interesting day. Three
different calendars all converge on this one day to make this a special day. Our secular calendar tells us that today is
the first day of Daylight Savings Time—we all lost an hour of sleep so we could
spring forward for an extra hour of daylight.
Our educational calendar tells us that today is the first Sunday of
Spring Break. And, the Christian
calendar tells us that today is the first Sunday of Lent.
Lent
is relatively new to me. I grew up in
Baptist churches which did not follow the Christian calendar. When I was growing up, my churches thought
the seasons of Advent and Lent were Catholic and not something we
observed. We were more inclined to
observe the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and the Annie Armstrong Easter
Offering.
But,
I don’t think we need to avoid the seasons of the Christian calendar. After all, Christmas and Easter are the two
most important Holy Days for Christians.
Christmas is the day we set aside to recognize the birth of Jesus…or the
time when God broke into human history and promised that God would always be
with us. Easter is the day we celebrate
the Resurrection of Jesus…the single most important event in all of human
history…the day when God conquered sin, death, evil and Hell…the day when the
Kingdom of God / the Reign of God broke into our world.
If
Christmas and Easter are our most important Holy Days, then it makes sense to
me that we would want to make a bigger deal than have two dates set aside on
the calendar. Perhaps we need to spend
some time preparing ourselves for Christmas and Easter. Advent is when we prepare for Christmas. Lent is when we prepare for Easter.
According
to the Four Gospels, Jesus spoke seven times from the cross. Over the next six weeks (seven including
Easter Sunday), let’s take a closer look at what Jesus said from the cross and
use these six or seven weeks to prepare for Easter.
Luke 23: 32 – 34…32 Two
other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33 When
they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with
the criminals--one on his right, the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And they divided up his clothes by casting
lots.
There’s
an interesting thing that happens as we read through the Gospels. We believe that Jesus’ earthly ministry
lasted about three years. If the Gospel
authors tried to write a detailed account of all of Jesus’ teaching, preaching,
ministry and miracles, the Gospels would be much longer than they are. Instead, the Gospels only focus on a few key
stories from Jesus’ three years of ministry and move very quickly through three
years of teaching, preaching, ministry and miracles.
But
all that changes when we reach the last week of Jesus’ life. All four Gospels move quickly through three
years of ministry and then slow down to give us detailed descriptions of each
day of Jesus’ last week…the week which began with the Triumphal Entry into
Jerusalem and ended with his Crucifixion and Resurrection.
With
all these details about Jesus’ last week…I find it interesting that none of the
Gospels goes into details about Crucifixion.
They give us minute by minute details about Jesus’ trials before the
Jewish Sanhedrin, Herod and Pilate. We
even know the name and the hometown of the man enlisted to carry Jesus’ cross
(Simon of Cyrene)! But, all we know
about the Crucifixion is what we read in Luke 23: 33, “…they crucified him…”
There
are probably a couple of reasons why the Gospels spare us the details of the
crucifixion. On one hand, the details of
a crucifixion were gruesome. On the
other hand, most people in the First Century Roman world knew what a
crucifixion looked like. Crucifixion was
more than just the execution of a criminal.
It was a public spectacle. The Romans
knew that public humiliation and public death did a good job of keeping the
peace. Watching a man carry his own
cross through town and watching him die a humiliating and painful death had a
way of keeping the crime rates low.
I
do not intend to reiterate the gruesome details of a Roman crucifixion. Let me simply say that the condemned person
was beaten, mocked, stripped naked and nailed to a wooden cross. The pain experienced during crucifixion was
worse than anything that human words could ever describe. In fact, the Romans invented a new word to
describe the pain of the cross. It was
not Agony. It was not Brutal. It was not Severe. It was Excruciating. This word Excruciating comes from two Latin
words: ex (Out of) and crux (Cross) which mean “Out of the
Cross.”[1] Therefore, excruciating pain is “pain from the cross.”
More
than likely, the person being crucified would have been nailed to the cross by
the wrists and the feet. Traditional art
depicts Jesus as having nail prints in the palms of his hands. (It is possible that Jesus had nails through
the palms of his hands and ropes tying his wrists to the cross to prevent the
nail holes from tearing.) However,
archaeology has revealed that the most common method was to put the nails in
the person’s wrist in order to hold up to the person’s weight.
Have
you ever bumped your “Funny Bone” and rolled around on the floor because it
hurt so badly? The nerve that we call
the funny bone runs through the wrist and would have been either smashed or
severed by the seven inch spikes that were hammered into Jesus’ flesh.
This
is only part of the pain that Jesus experienced on the cross. Yes, Jesus experienced excruciating physical pain.
However, Jesus also experienced other pain that we might classify as
emotional pain. Jesus was an innocent
man. I don’t mean that he was merely
innocent of the crimes he was accused of committing. Jesus was actually innocent in every sense of
the word innocent. Jesus had never
committed any sin. Although Jesus had
been tempted in every way as you and I are tempted today, Jesus had resisted
temptation and remained pure. But Jesus
was not crucified for his sins. He was
crucified for your sins and my sins. Can
you imagine the emotional weight and strain of having the guilt of the entire
world placed on your shoulders? Many of
us feel weighted down with our own guilt and sin. But Jesus felt the emotional weight of all
guilt and sin.
On
top of this emotional weight of guilt and sin, Jesus also felt abandoned by all
his friends in his moment of need.
According to the Gospels, all of Jesus’ disciples ran away when Jesus
was arrested.
Just
a week before the crucifixion, Jesus had been surrounded by twelve disciples, a
larger group of followers, a group of women and a crowd chanting “Hosanna to
the King.” Then just a day before the
crucifixion, Jesus had made a bold prophesy—They will strike the shepherd and
the sheep will scatter. Jesus knew that
all his disciples would run away when faced with danger. Of course, Peter did not believe this was
possible. Peter jumped to his feet and
announced in front of God and everybody, “Though everyone else might fall away,
I will never fall away.” But that wasn’t
exactly what happened. Peter did run
away—just like Jesus told him he would.
Then Peter even denied Jesus in front of others.
Father
It
probably shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus’ first words from the cross were
addressed to God. Jesus didn’t speak to
Peter, the disciples or the crowd of people, because they weren’t there. Everyone had left Jesus, and there was only
one person there to hear his cries. With
no one else there to hear him, Jesus prayed.
We
aren’t surprised that Jesus prayed on the cross, because that’s what we often do
when we are facing the most difficult circumstances we have ever faced. When we are going through physical pain
(illness and surgeries), we pray. When
we face emotional grief (when friends or family members die or even abandon
us), we pray.
However,
our prayers sound a little different from Jesus’ prayer. Our prayers tend to focus on our own
needs. We pray, “Help me, Lord;” “Heal
me, Lord;” “Help me make it through the night, Lord.” And that is NOT what Jesus prayed. Before Jesus gave any thought to his own predicament
or his own needs, Jesus prayed for others.
Forgive
Jesus
specifically prayed for forgiveness. The
Greek word we translate “forgive” actually means “to release.” Forgiveness is an act of God to release us
from our sins and the punishment our sins deserve.
One
of my favorite ways to describe the forgiveness God offers us is to use a human
illustration about forgiveness. I got
this illustration from a book I read in a college theology course (Fisher
Humphreys, Thinking about God: An
Introduction to Christian Theology, [New Orleans: Insight Press, 1974]).
Imagine
that you are in business with someone who has been your life-long friend. After a long and successful career, you
discover that your friend and business partner has been stealing money from
you. When you find out all the details,
you discover that your friend and business partner has stolen your entire life
savings. There are three ways you can
respond.
First,
you can simply ignore the theft. You can
continue to be friends and business partners.
This is what most people think of when they think of forgiveness. However, forgetting is not the same thing as
forgiveness. In fact, forgetting is not
a good option. By ignoring the problem,
you are not helping your friend and business partner—he will continue to steal,
because he has gotten away with it. By
ignoring the problem, you are also an accomplice to the crime. You knew about it and did nothing.
Second,
you can punish the criminal. If you
punish the criminal, you alleviate your own guilt, you help the criminal to
“learn his lesson” and hopefully correct his ways. You even have the satisfaction of “doing the
right thing” and seeking justice. But,
justice does not fix the relationship.
In fact, justice is probably going to destroy the relationship.
The
third way is the way of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not the same thing as forgetting or ignoring the
crime. Forgiveness is not the same thing
as justice. Forgiveness is suffering the
consequences of someone else’s actions and working to restore the relationship.
This
is what Jesus did on the cross. Jesus
did not ignore our sins. Jesus did not
suffer the consequences of his own sins.
Jesus suffered because of our sins.
Jesus did not give us what we deserve.
Jesus took the punishment and consequences that we deserved so that we
could be reconciled to God.
Forgiveness
is hard. Forgiveness is painful. Forgiveness is impossible without suffering.
Them
Of
course this raises a question about the subject of Jesus’ prayer. Who did Jesus have in mind when he prayed,
“Father, forgive THEM?” Who is “them?”
I
think the simplest answer is to look at the people gathered at the foot of the
cross. As I have already mentioned, the
disciples and the crowds were not at the cross.
Jesus was surrounded by Roman soldiers.
These soldiers were professional executioners who were only following
the orders handed down to them by a higher authority. The higher authority was nothing less than
the Roman government—the most powerful political force in the ancient world.
Yet,
the Roman government did not act alone.
In fact, the crucifixion of Jesus was resulted from the collusion of two
powerful entities. The Roman political
leaders and the Jewish religious leaders put aside all their differences in
order to join forces and get rid of Jesus of Nazareth.
This
leads me to believe Jesus was praying for more than just the soldiers who were
faithfully carrying out their orders. I
think Jesus was also praying for those who gave the orders in the first
place. Jesus was praying for his
enemies.
Jesus
was practicing what he had preached in the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 5: 43 – 44…
43 "You have
heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and
hate your enemy.' 44 But
I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you,
I
guess Jesus didn’t mean that to be a metaphor.
He literally meant for us to love our enemies and to pray for those who
persecute us. We are supposed to want
the best for the people who most want to hurt us!
Don’t
miss this…Jesus was not only praying for the Roman soldiers, the Roman
government authorities and the Jewish religious leaders…Jesus was also praying
for you and me when he prayed for his enemies.
The Roman government and the Jewish religion were not the only ones who
put Jesus on the cross. Our sin put
Jesus on the cross. We are Jesus’
enemies. We are responsible for Jesus’
crucifixion and death.
Conclusion
Forgiveness
is the first word Jesus spoke from the cross. And, forgiveness is the first word of
relationship!
Forgiveness
is the only way to have relationship with God.
And, the cross is the only way forgiveness is possible. Forgiveness is not the same thing as ignoring
our sin. Forgiveness is certainly not the
same thing as justice—giving us what we deserve. Forgiveness is when God accepted the
suffering and consequences of our sins on himself, because God loves us and
wants to establish a relationship with us.
Forgiveness
and Love and the Cross cannot be separated…
God
loves you so much, it hurts. God’s love is
an Arduous Love…a Tortuous Love…an Excruciating Love…(a love from the cross).
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