Father, Forgive Them February 22, 2015

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1 Father, Forgive Them February 22, 2015 Luke 23: 26, 33-34a 26 As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. 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, they crucified him there, 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. We are in the season of Lent. Lent is the period of 40 days, not counting Sundays, before Easter in which we spend time examining our hearts and our lives in preparation for the celebration of Easter. During Lent we will be looking at what is commonly referred to as the seven last words of Jesus. Really it would be more accurate to call them the seven last statements of Jesus, because each of them is more than one word. Nevertheless, it is a study of statements that Jesus made while he was dying on the cross. As we study them, we hope to learn something more about the nature of God as revealed through his son Jesus. The first word or statement of Jesus that we want to look at appears at the end of the scripture we read today, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Forgiveness. That s a big topic. Just Google forgiveness and you ll get quite a variety of responses. You ll find articles from the Mayo Clinic on what forgiveness is and what the benefits are from a health standpoint. You ll find articles from Psychology Today. You ll find songs and Biblical quotes. You ll find dictionary definitions. When I was in seminary, the Pastoral Counseling department offered a semester long course on Forgiveness. What forgiveness means in our lives and the benefits of forgiving are a big industry, if you will, these days. So what does the dictionary say it means to forgive? Well it says things like this: to grant pardon for or remission of an offense, debt, etc.; to give up all claim on account of; to grant pardon to (a person); to cease to feel resentment against; to cancel an indebtedness. So, to forgive means that we don t hold something over somebody s head anymore. It doesn t mean that we forget, it just means that we don t let whatever happened eat away at us anymore. I have a friend who once commented to me on the day that would have been her 27 th wedding anniversary about how she and her husband made it 22 years as a married couple. They had two children and still worked together to love and care for those children. There was a sadness that they couldn t work things out, but she was not angry with her ex-husband. She didn t hold a grudge against him for the failure of their 1

2 marriage. She had forgiven him for his part in the marriage ending and she had forgiven herself for her part. She hadn t forgotten, but she had forgiven for what happened in the past and for the sake of her children had moved on to continue a functional relationship with her ex-husband. Kind of like in the movie Mrs. Doubtfire, the mother and father forgive each other so that they can move forward do what is best for their children. If you think about it, there are little things that we do to forgive each other each and every day. We forgive a friend for being late in meeting us. We ask forgiveness for a comment that we made that came out wrong. We forgive others for cutting in front of us in the grocery store and we ask forgiveness for the same. Sometimes we have to grant forgiveness for little things like a traffic faux paux and sometimes for big things like actions that have caused irreparable damage to our lives. I don t believe that any of those things even come close to the forgiveness that Jesus asked for on the cross. When Jesus said these words he was hanging on the cross. Jesus had arrived in Jerusalem with his disciples a few days before this. Jesus knew that as he headed to Jerusalem that there were those who were wanting him dead. Last week we talked about how some of the good Pharisees tried to warn him not to go to Jerusalem because they knew that Herod was wanting to kill Jesus. Jesus knew that there were many people who were threatened by him. The religious leaders didn t like that he took his authority directly from God. They didn t like that he healed people on Sundays and that he hung out with the riff raff of society. They d just as soon get rid of him. The Roman authorities felt threatened by Jesus because he attracted a lot of attention. People listened to Jesus, they followed him and they were worried that Jesus might lead the people in a revolution against Rome and they couldn t have that. and Jesus knew that he was going to be falsely accused of blasphemy and insurrection and that he would be killed for it. Jesus went to Jerusalem anyways. And after a sham of a trial and a severe beating in which he was bloodied and injured, the Roman authorities led him away to a hill outside of the city walls of Jerusalem to be crucified. To be crucified meant to be nailed to a cross and to stay there until you died. The person being crucified usually carried the cross beam of their cross through town the long way so that the most people possible would see them. They carried the crossbar to the place where it would be connected to the vertical beam and they would be lifted up to hang by their arms and their feet until they died. Imagine trying to hold yourself up so that you could breathe. In order to lift your chest to inhale you had to pull up by your arms that were nailed to the crossbeam and try to push 2

3 up with your legs that were nailed at the ankle to the vertical post. Every breath was excruciating. Every word spoken excruciating. Those who were crucified usually died from a combination of things: suffocation from not being able to lift their chest enough to breathe; pooling of fluids around their organs; dehydration; and starvation to name a few. Sometimes it took up to a week for someone to die. For Jesus, it was thankfully just a matter of hours. Maybe that was just because he was so badly beaten to begin with. Maybe it was just because God couldn t bear to let him suffer any longer. But think, in this situation of Jesus saying, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. We may wonder just who they is? Who is Jesus referring to? Who does Jesus want God to forgive? Well it is probably a lot of people including us. This was a prayer from Jesus to his Father God. He wants God to forgive those who were crucifying him, the Romans. They certainly didn t understand what they were doing. The Roman soldiers were just following orders. Simple as that. Either they followed orders or they would face punishment and possibly even death themselves. Jesus also was asking God to forgive the religious leaders of the day who decided they didn t like Jesus brand of ministry and who conspired to have him killed out of jealousy and spiritual blindness. They certainly didn t understand what they were doing or who Jesus was. Jesus was also asking God to forgive all those in the crowd who stood by and watched and taunted and did nothing. This also includes the disciples who stood by, seemingly helpless. And Jesus was asking God to forgive all those in the future who would fail to recognize who Jesus was and even when recognizing Jesus deciding to follow a path other than the one Jesus offered those who in future times would stand by and let things happen that they knew were wrong. Remember the old hymn Were you there when they crucified my Lord? How could Jesus forgive those who had done this to him? How could he ask God to forgive them? Well, the only answer that even comes close to making sense to me is that Jesus saw the bigger picture. Jesus knew that on the third day after his death that he was going to come back to life. Jesus knew that he was going to prove all the naysayers wrong about who he was. He knew that he was the Messiah, God s son, God in the flesh come to earth. He 3

4 knew that when he came back to life that all those who d been wrong about him would be confronted with the truth. And Jesus understood that he was to be the once and for all sacrifice that would forgive (there s that word again!) the sins of the people. Back in the Old Testament in Leviticus 16 God gave Moses the instructions for how Moses was to atone (to make up for or pay the price or make things right) for the people s sins. In order to be forgiven for their sins every year the priest was to take two goats and symbolically place the sins of the people on the heads of the goats. They were to slaughter one goat on the altar in the tabernacle and take another goat and send it off into the wilderness. This second goat was called the scapegoat and was never to be seen again. Maybe it was eaten by wild animals, starved, live out a happy life. The sins were to be carried away with goat. Do you think the goat really had some magical powers? Did the goat really take sins away no it was a symbol. This sacrifice had to be done every year to pay for the sins of the previous year. God offered Jesus as a sacrifice once and for all to take away our sins. Unlike the goat, Jesus had the power to take away our sins. So when Jesus asked God to forgive them, that s what God did. He forgave not only the sins of the people of Jesus time, but our sins too. Jesus paid the price for us that we might be freed from our sins. Isn t that incredible? God offered grace to all those who were there to listen when Jesus was crucified and that grace extends to us. Remember grace is something that is freely given, which we do not deserve. God s grace is costly the price paid was Jesus, God s son. Because of the cost, God s grace is not a gift that we can easily ignore. When we talk about needing forgiveness from God, we talk about receiving forgiveness for sin. We don t like word sin. I don t like it to be honest. The original Greek and Hebrew words in the Bible that we translate as sin often mean to stray from the path or to miss the mark. I think I like that better. You might agree with me that often we don t follow God s path, we try to make our own. We think we can do it on our own. At least I do. In the process, I end up following my own path and not necessarily God s. Now in the Methodist Church we don t spend a whole lot of time dwelling on sin. We acknowledge that all have sinned and fallen short. But God doesn t leave us there in our sin. God is a god of grace and mercy. Remember Jesus on the cross asked God to forgive those who were causing him harm. Jesus was asking for grace and mercy in this midst of incredible pain and suffering that he was experiencing. He thought of us, not himself at that moment. Wow! 4

5 The point is that we don t need to dwell in what we ve done wrong and focus on feeling guilty. The point is to discover the grace and healing mercy of God we so desperately need. During this season of Lent, we want to examine and our hearts, our minds, and our lives to see why we need what Jesus prayed for that day on the cross. What he died for. He died that we might be forgiven. I like the way that the Apostle Paul described it in his letter to the church in Rome (Romans 5: 6-8) 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God s forgiveness of us has already happened. Do you need to know that today? Do you need to acknowledge that God has forgiven you? If we truly believed that God had forgiven us for wandering off his path, could we forgive others? One of the reasons so much has been written on forgiveness is that the lack of forgiveness literally can make us sick. We can become physically sick as we harbor anger and pain and resentment towards others. We can become emotionally sick as we become bitter in our actions and words towards others. We can become spiritually sick as we just assume that God must be just like us just as unforgiving as we ourselves our. This Lent, give yourselves a break. Receive God s forgiveness. Jesus has already paid the price. And then let that forgiveness flow through you to others. Let s pray together 5