“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” 

 

The first sentence from the cross that Good Friday is a prayer that Jesus teaches us to pray even when he is facing imminent death.  Every weekend in worship, we pray another, more famous, prayer that Jesus taught us. We call it the Lord’s Prayer.  Despite its length, we have committed it to memory.  But on this Friday from the cross, Jesus chooses to model again – to reiterate in action –what it really means to “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”   In just two words, the first two words that Jesus prays from the cross that Friday noon, Jesus teaches us again when he says – “Father, forgive...”

 

Jesus, in this one moment, in this one act on the cross, took upon himself all the pain and mess of the world. On the cross he literally puts himself in our place; absorbs all the consequences of hypocrisy and meanness and violence and greed, and he still says "Father, forgive…".  In this one moment, in this one act on the cross, Jesus answers affirmatively and for all time the first part of what we continue to pray for every week in the Lord’s Prayer – “forgive us our sins.”  He forgives us fully and models for us in the most horrible of circumstances how we are to respond to those who sin against us.  And this is the place where we most need prayer - the Lord’s Prayer, this prayer from the cross and every prayer we can muster - for it is the part that is up to us – forgiving others rather than demanding (or at least desiring) revenge or retribution. 

 

As forgiven people, passing that forgiveness to another is an aspect of our religious practice that is fully up to us.  Pope John Paul II put it this way, “forgiveness is above all a personal choice, a decision of the heart to go against the natural instinct to pay back evil with evil.” [1]

Henri Nouwen, spiritual thinker and prolific writer, said that forgiveness is love practiced among people who love poorly. It sets us free without wanting anything in return. Jesus knew that forgiveness was a foreign concept to us humans having lived among us for awhile.  He knew that we were bad at forgiveness but now, from the cross, caught up in the very response that is much more natural to us – greed, power, authority, and control – Jesus prays – “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

 

Perhaps you saw the follow-up article in the Indianapolis Star last week about a local church that found itself defending its decision to reach out not only to the victim in a child molestation case but also to the child molester.  The same day a similar story ran on NPR about a church in Carlsbad, California. [2]  My neighbor caught me at the school bus stop the day the Indianapolis Star story ran to ask what I thought the right answer was - apparently thinking I was an expert in such cases and that there would be a clear cut answer if only she could ask a minister.  It was clear from her questions that she believed that the church was absolutely wrong for having any contact with the perpetrator of this crime and that he should be cast out of any organized community of faith.  I responded that I knew of no church that would make such a decision without a great amount of study and prayer.  I told her that I also know that we are confronted with many situations in which a truly Christ-like response looks radically different from our first impulse or what society would want us to do.  In thinking about that conversation since then, it seems to me that we would like for forgiveness to be on when we want it on and off when we want it off.  Jesus compels us when he taught us to pray – both in the Lord’s Prayer and in the first words of this prayer from the cross – that forgiveness should be always on. 

 

When we gave our life to Christ – made our profession of faith as 40 young people are doing in this congregation last and this weekend – we committed ourselves fully to Christ.  It would be much more convenient if we could pick and choose which of the commandments we want to follow – which of Christ’s teachings we think apply to us - when we should offer forgiveness to a person who crossed us - but that’s not the deal.  When we gave our life to Christ, it was NOT a part-time gift – it was a full-time, 24/7 proposition. 

 

So, not surprisingly, the first words out of Jesus’ mouth as he is placed on a cross to begin a painful death are a prayer – a prayer of forgiveness.  They didn’t know it at the time – perhaps we have never put two and two together.  Christ’s message of forgiveness of sin did not begin at the cross – he taught it to his disciples in the Lord’s Prayer, he modeled the message as he ate with tax collectors and touched those considered by society to be unclean.  May the message that is made clearly in this first word be our message.  May Christ’s prayer that day be a model to us in all of our relationships and encounters from this day forward.

 

 

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