Next Sunday we end the long post-Pentecost season, celebrating Christ as King before we re-set the church clock and go back to the beginning of the story. The "Christ the King" readings always show Jesus at his most humble, as befits one who said his kingdom was not of this world. This week's gospel shows him humiliated and degraded, dying a brutal death on a cross. It is an image we associate with Holy Week, not late fall. But as the ugliness of our recent election and its outcome become ever more vivid, it fits all too well.
When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
We are going to have to get into the forgiveness business seriously and often. And it is not going to be easy; it will mean forgiving people who not only are not sorry, but don’t care about the damage they do. We will have to ask whether we are forgiving prematurely, and risk being seen as condoning the unacceptable.
Lest you think I exaggerate, let me point to the innumerable incidents of overt racisim, hate, violence against immigrants, LGBTQ people, Muslims, people of color and others that have been reported from all over our country since the election less than a week ago. A gay couple in Delaware found a note on their door addressed “To the homos,” announcing what would happen to them now that Trump was president. Saturday, an Episcopal church in Silver Spring, Maryland had the banner announcing its Spanish-language eucharist defaced with large black letters proclaiming, “Trump Nation: Whites Only.” This is real, folks, and these are only two incidents I personally know about. There are hundreds more, including school children being terrorized.
Are the perpetrators covered by Jesus’ prayer, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?” Are we? How on earth do we forgive willful cruelty? We start by drawing on the power of Christ available to us. It's hard to associate power with the image of a naked, beaten, helpless man nailed to a cross. Yet that is exactly what Christian belief invites us to do, to see beneath the outward image to the spiritual reality. And that reality Jesus demonstrated in a gesture of incomprehensible generosity: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."
He recognized that the Jewish leaders seeking his death and the Roman leaders carrying out the unjust sentence were so caught up in systems of human control, they couldn’t see the larger picture or their own complicity. Having the power to forgive the unforgivable will require us to step out of our human systems as well, even if our intent is to bring justice. Are we also complicit in degrading the "Other?"
Each gospel writer stresses in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion those elements he thinks matter most. Luke, champion of the poor and outcast, who so often highlights Jesus’ compassion, puts this act of forgiveness on the cross front and center. This is the kind of kingship we are to follow – forgiveness for the unforgivable, even at the point of death.
I don’t want to have to practice this, but I believe I’m going to have many opportunities. Maybe I’ll get better at it.
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