Sermons

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“Father, Forgive Them”
March 23, 2003
Jeff Van Duzer
3rd in a sermon series on the Seven Last Words of Christ
Luke 23:34

This morning we’re going to be continuing on in our Lenten sermon series looking at the seven last “words” that Jesus speaks from the cross. Our text for this morning comes from Luke 23:34. It’s very simple.

“Then Jesus said, ‘Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.’ ”

Luke is the only gospel writer who picks up this phrase and, if you look in your pew Bible, the double brackets around this verse are there to point out that almost half of the very earliest manuscripts of Luke left this verse out. So it’s one of Jesus’ most obscure sayings. Yet down through the centuries, the church has always included it in the seven final words. Indeed, in most traditions, it has actually been given the prominent position of being the first of Christ’s words from the cross. It seems to me to be an especially poignant word for us today.

All of the words and phrases that we are looking at during this Lenten series give us windows into God’s character but perhaps none of them capture as fully as this verse the fullness of the Gospel. In just 12 short words this verse speaks volumes about the mission and character of Jesus and about the very heart of God. “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

I don’t know about you, but one of the difficulties I find in a Lenten series that comes back every week to the crucifixion is that the story gets so very familiar. We’ve just heard the crucifixion story so many times that, at least for me, it begins to lose its ability to shock with the horror of the event.

This week I’ve had the joy of reading some from Philip Yancey’s book, The Jesus I Never Knew. If you’ve not read this I’d really encourage you to read it. One of Yancey’s real gifts is his ability to take familiar stories and make them fresh again. And this is what’s happened a little bit for me as I’ve thought about the crucifixion again this week. Specifically, the key impression that hit me afresh is the magnitude of the shame and humiliation that Jesus endures.

You remember that it begins with a trumped-up trial. There’s insufficient evidence to convict Jesus of the charges. The trier, in fact, Pilot, concludes that he is innocent and is about to release him. But then for reasons unrelated to guilt or innocence he decides not to do that. He is facing a crowd shouting, “Crucify him.” He’s worried that if he releases Jesus it might trigger a riot. A riot might trigger notice from Rome. Notice from Rome might cost Pilot his position. And so he does the politically expedient thing. He washes his hands and he sends Jesus off to be crucified.

Along his way Jesus is first given to Roman soldiers. You remember this part of the story. They strip him. They beat him. They whip him. They blindfold him. They taunt him. Philip Yancey describes this part of the walk to the cross by recalling another story. Let me just read a paragraph or so from his book.

“In a memoir of the years before World War II, Pierre Van Paassen tells of an act of humiliation by Nazi storm troopers who had seized an elderly Jewish rabbi and dragged him to headquarters. In the far end of the same room, two colleagues were beating another Jew to death, but the captors of the rabbi decided to have some fun with him. They stripped him naked and commanded that he preach the sermon he had prepared for the coming Sabbath in the synagogue. The rabbi asked if he could wear his yarmulke, and the Nazis, grinning, agreed. It added to the joke. The trembling rabbi proceeded to deliver in a raspy voice his sermon on what it means to walk humbly before God, all the while being poked and prodded by the hooting Nazis, and all the while hearing the last cries of his neighbor at the end of the room.”

Yancey continues,

“When I read the gospel accounts of the imprisonment, torture, and execution of Jesus, I think of that naked rabbi standing humiliated in a police station… I still cannot fathom the indignity, the shame endured by God’s Son on earth, stripped naked, flogged, spat on, struck in the face, garlanded with thorns.”

After that treatment, they took a crossbeam (not probably the whole cross, but a heavy cross beam) and they tied it to his arms and put it on his back and required that he carry it up to a hill, Golgotha, sometimes called the Skull -– where we get our word Calvary. Here they laid it down and they took nails and drove them through his hands attaching him to this crossbeam. They probably also tied his arms to the crossbeam so that he wouldn’t slip off. Already planted in the ground would be the vertical beam. Once he was attached to the cross beam they would lift him up and attach the crossbeam to the vertical beam. They bent his legs in an awkward shape and they pounded some nails through his feet. They also probably tied him around the waist so that he wouldn’t slip off and so that his arms wouldn’t pull out of his arm sockets.

To die on a cross is a horrific way to die. As Dan reminded us a couple of weeks ago, it was so bad that no Roman citizen could ever be killed in this fashion. In fact it was a death reserved for non-Romans who were of the lowest classes or had committed the most heinous crimes. It was also intended to be a deterrent and so crosses were placed in very public settings. Often crosses were placed at the junctures of key roads so that everyone would see the crucified as they walked by. And what I think I have not focused on as much before is that the people that were hung on the crosses were hung there naked. They were stripped of all their clothes.

For some reason, I have always pictured the cross as being very high up and that Christ was hanging there and that these crowds were down below -- maybe because of artwork or displays in churches. But, in fact, the cross was probably only tall enough to have Jesus’ feet be no more than 3 or 4 feet off the ground. As crowds gathered and milled around at this juncture, they are staring eye level at the midriff of this naked man. He’s hanging there and he’s dying.

Dying on the cross comes because you bleed to death, or because you dehydrate, or because you’re exhausted, or eventually because you suffocate -- you simply lose the ability to take one more breath. Strong people could last a couple of days. Many could not last that long. And Jesus in all his humiliation and shame –- naked, exposed, dying on the cross, says these words:

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

Anytime that I have the opportunity to preach on a gospel account, I always feel that I can approach it from one of two ways. First, I can approach it by, in effect, putting myself and the congregation into the shoes of Jesus. In other words, we can see Jesus as our model and clearly this is appropriate. Scripture tells us that we are to imitate Christ. The church is said to be the visible expression of the presence of Christ here in our world. You and I are invited to pick up our crosses and follow after Jesus.

So, we could look at this passage from this vantage point. Indeed, down through history, Jesus' last words have become somewhat of a model for Christian martyrs. If one looks in the seventh chapter of Acts one discovers a similar phrase uttered by Stephen just before he dies being stoned to death as the first Christian martyr. Similarly, prayers for their enemies and particularly for those who are persecuting them became a rather common feature of the recorded prayers of the historic Christian martyrs.

Now it’s unlikely living in America that you and I will ever experience martyrdom in a literal sense. But we might still ask of this passage, when we think of Jesus as model, what would it mean for us to absorb enormous humiliation and not respond with violence or rancor? What would it mean for us to deal from weakness? What would it mean for us to be in the practice of praying that God would forgive our enemies? Praying that God would forgive those who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center? Praying that God would forgive the sins of a wicked Saddam Hussein for all the things he’s done to his people, and for his part in promoting and prompting this war? What would it mean for us to pray that God would forgive the sins of our leaders, for arrogance and hubris? What does it mean for us to be a people who pray regularly for forgiveness of sins for our enemies? We could look at the passage from that light.

But there’s always another perspective that you can bring to a gospel passage -- that is not so much to envisage oneself in the shoes of Jesus in the story, but to see oneself more in the shoes of people who interact with Jesus. And there is tremendous need for us to be able to do that if we’re really going to be able to understand this passage today. In some way we need, I think, to see ourselves as the Romans who are pounding the nails into Jesus’ hands. We need to see ourselves as God’s chosen people, the Jews, who are manipulating the crucifixion. We need to see ourselves in that crowd of people who are disenchanted and mocking this dying man. And we need to see ourselves in the disciples who aren’t there, because they’ve run away out of fear or perhaps embarrassment. In short we need to be able to see ourselves as the “them” that Jesus speaks of when he says,

“Father forgive them.”

But you may say I wasn’t there. I didn’t do any of that stuff. I didn’t really contribute to God’s crucifixion. Is that right? We have this common link with these people; you and I are sinners. Their sin contributed to the death of Jesus on the cross, and your sin and my sin contributed to the death of Jesus on the cross. There’s that spiritual that we sing, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” And the answer is emphatically yes. Our sins contribute to His death on the cross.

Now we don’t talk a great deal about sin in our church. Sin’s kind of an old-fashioned sounding term. I was trying to think this week, what would be a good definition of sin? Let me suggest the following:

Sin is anything that we do -– in thought, word or deed -– or anything that we should have done that we didn’t do, that has the effect of disturbing, violating, or breaking Gods intended “shalom,” God’s intended peace or harmony, God’s design for the world. Anything we do that disrupts God’s intended design is sin and needs to be forgiven.

Now, that’s a pretty broad definition. Most of us when we think about sin probably start thinking about conscious voluntary sins. I know it’s wrong to cheat on a test, but I really need my scholarship, so I choose to do the wrong thing. I know it’s wrong to have an adulterous affair, but I just want it so badly I’m not going to give it up. These are clearly sinful. Voluntarily chosen actions that we know to be wrong clearly are sin.

But these are only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole range of sin that would fall into the category of “acts not recognized as wrong.” You see when Jesus prays, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” he’s saying, in effect, that people who don’t know that they’re doing wrong still need the forgiveness of the Father.

And so I think of a whole range of other sins. Sins I commit from time to time just because I’m not aware. Every time I’m so caught up in things I’m busy about and can’t hear one of my kids say, “Dad, can I talk to you?” I commit sin. Every time I’m at work so eager to get a project completed that I get frustrated with people who are slower than I want them to be and I take that frustration out on them, I commit sin. Every time I approach Margie, my wife, with a transactional approach where I’m going to give a little and try to get something back, I commit sin.

And those are just personal sins. There’s also the notion of corporate sin. And this is also something, I think, that’s often hard for us to accept. But I believe that scripture clearly teaches that we are culpable for corporate sin. For example, I pay taxes to this country. My tax dollars fund the activities of this country. When this country engages in sin I am partially culpable. I buy things from corporations. They use my purchase dollars to fund their operations. When their operations abuse the environment or abuse their labor force, I am partially culpable. These fit within my very broad definition of sin, because in each case I am disrupting God’s perfect design.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m not also guilty even for wickedness that I can’t draw any causal connection to. For example, in the grand scheme of things I may need to be forgiven even for the wickedness of Saddam Hussein. I’ll tell you why I think that. I think that when you and I commit an individual sin we are clearly disobeying God in the moment and causing a break in the way He would have things be. But also, I think, we are opening a rift that allows evil and sin to move in.

Remember Adam and Eve in the garden. Their sin, eating some fruit from a tree, was a sort of simple sin. God said don’t eat that fruit. They ate the fruit. It was a clear act of disobedience. We’d say it’s a clear sin but relatively confined. And yet scripture says that through that one act sin entered the world. And I wonder if your and my sinful choices don’t similarly open opportunities for evil to infect the world. You see, I believe we stand very much with the Romans, and the Jews, and the crowds, and the disciples that ran away. Our sin has contributed to the cross –- contributed to Jesus being there -– and we need to hear those words, “Father forgive them (Father forgive us for we know not what we’re) doing.”

Sometimes we feel like telling God that this is unfair. It’s unfair to hold us responsible for sins that we don’t even know we’re committing. I mean, how can one be responsible for something if he or she didn’t know it was wrong to do? And I don’t have a very good answer to that this morning. I think in part it’s a mystery. But I have at least a hint of a possible answer.

Some of you may have read in the paper during this last month that one of our Supreme Court Justices was arrested for drunk driving. I think it was over in Magnolia. She had three times the allowable blood level of alcohol and she hit a parked truck. She started to drive away and somebody was able to corral her and stop her. And she was charged with two things. She was charged with drunk driving and she was charged with hit-and-run. Shortly after her arrest, her lawyer came on television during the news to explain why it was that the Justice was going to challenge the hit-and-run charge. His argument went like this: According to the law, to be guilty of hit and run, you have to know that an accident occurred and you have to voluntarily be leaving the accident. The Justice was too drunk to know that she had hit anything and too drunk to know that she was leaving the scene of an accident. Now frankly, as a lawyer, I thought that argument might be right. That argument might win. But there was an intuitive part of me that said, “NO, come on!” She created the condition that made it so that she didn’t know that she was doing something wrong. That doesn’t make her less culpable. Perhaps that makes her more culpable. And it seems that maybe, just maybe, God might say “come on” to us. “Your heritage of sin doesn’t excuse you even though it keeps you from recognizing right or wrong decisions. It doesn’t make you less culpable. Indeed it may make you more culpable.”

We need to hear “Father forgive us” even when we know not what we are doing.

I thought I would end this morning by pointing out from this one short phrase, three wonderful aspects of the character of God that relate back to our sin. Three aspects of his character that ought to draw us to him.

The first is this: In this little prayer Jesus reminds us that we have a God who so desires a relationship with us that he was willing to risk making himself vulnerable to rejection. You’ve probably all met people who are so self-contained that they don’t let anybody get close. They keep everybody at bay. And their reasoning is: “If nobody gets close, then if somebody does something to me, or leaves, they can’t hurt me. I’m not connected with them. As long as I hold them at bay they’re not capable of hurting me.”

But notice Jesus’ prayer. He says, “Father forgive them.” He doesn’t say, “I forgive them.” He turns it to God and says, God the Father, would you please forgive them. Jesus recognizes that the sin that was being done to him -– the nails that were being pounded into his hands –- was inflicting wounds on God the Father. And the reason that it can hurt God the Father is because God the Father desires to be in relationship with us.

You see -- it’s amazing to me -- God made this whole thing and could have created us like little toys and then stepped back and watched us play and sort of get some mild amusement out of that. But God didn’t want that. God wanted to be in relationship with us. And as soon as God decided he wanted to be in relationship with us he had to make himself vulnerable to being hurt by our rejection. You can’t have a relationship without that kind of vulnerability. And so God, the almighty, the creator of everything, so wanted to be in relationship with you and me that he was willing to risk rejection. Every time you and I sin we reject God. And it hurts him. But he was willing to put himself in a position where he could be hurt for the sake of relationship.

Second, this short passage reminds us that because of God’s desire for relationship and God’s desire for reconciliation, God’s forgiveness will always outdistance our sin.

I used to think of repentance as a kind of transaction. If I was ever humble enough to recognize I had done something wrong and was willing to admit it, I would go to whomever it was that I had offended, or to God, and I would say, “I’m sorry. I apologize. Please forgive me.” Then in response to my repentance God (or the other person) would say “OK, I forgive you.”

We had a deal.

But look at the passage. It’s just the opposite. Jesus says to God the Father, “Please forgive these people who don’t even know that they’re doing anything wrong. They haven’t yet figured out they’re doing any wrong let alone repented. That is, I want you to forgive them a long time before they ever turn back to you.”

The question in my mind, then, is what does it mean for God the Father to forgive someone who has not yet repented? Who has not even understood that they’ve done something wrong?

Here’s the mental picture that I have. When you and I sin we set up a kind of a moral barrier between us and God. We create a divide in the relationship. And for God the Father to forgive us is like God sticking his hand through that moral divide -- reaching out in fellowship to us. Saying, in effect, “I want the relationship.” But the outstretched hand doesn’t by itself create the relationship because we still have to grab that hand. But forgiveness extends the hand. And the hand is extended even before we recognize that we’ve done anything wrong. Even before we’ve repented. Even before we’ve turned back to God.

Some of you sitting there may be thinking that you have gone too far away, sinned too much. Perhaps you are saying to yourself, “I’ve turned my back too far from God. His hand of forgiveness could not possibly reach me.” If you have even a hint of those thoughts this morning, bring them to the cross. Never in human history was more evil concentrated in one moment at one time. And in the midst of that moment Jesus says, “Father forgive them for this.” You can’t possibly out-sin God’s desire to forgive. Even when the prodigal son had gone to the far country, the father was getting up every morning scanning the horizon, hoping for him to come back. Before the prodigal son saw the father, the father saw the son and was running out to greet him. You can’t outdistance the love and forgiveness of God because it’s his very character to restore the relationship.

And then the last observation.

It cost God dearly to be able to forgive like this. We would have such a different gospel, such a different picture of God, if Jesus had gone up to the Garden of Gethsemene and said, “You know God, I’ve been hanging around these disciples for all this time. They’re pretty good guys. Why don’t you just forgive everybody?” And God said, “OK, everybody is forgiven.”

But somehow it couldn’t work that way. We don’t know -– and there are loads of theories on this -– we don’t know why it was necessary. But we do know that it was necessary for Jesus to die on the cross, in this horrific, shameful, humiliating way in order to make it possible for God’s hand to be extended out in forgiveness. You see as Jesus is hanging on the cross he is acting, in part, as a priest who looks to the Father in intimacy and intercedes for the people. That’s what a priest does. But he also hangs on the cross as a sacrificial lamb. For some reason it was necessary that he bleed and die in order that God’s hand could be extended.

This morning, I think God wants you to know that your sin made it necessary that His son die on a cross in order for Him to reach out to you. But I don’t think he wants you to know that just to make you feel bad. I think he wants you to know that so that you have some hint of how much he loves you. Of what it was worth to him to be able to hold hands with you again. It was worth to him his own son. For God so loved the world that He gave his only son in order that he could extend the hand of forgiveness with the hope of restoring relationship with you.

And that’s our God.

Amen.