11-14-22 - Father, Forgive Them...

You can listen to this reflection here.

Next Sunday we celebrate Christ as King before we re-set the church clock and go back to the beginning of the story in Advent. 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 the week before Thanksgiving. Yet, as the bitter divisions in our world become ever deeper, 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.”

In our conflicted times, we need to get into the forgiveness business seriously and often. It is not easy; it means forgiving people who may not be sorry, or care about the damage they do. When we reach across barriers of difference, we will have to ask whether we are forgiving prematurely, and risk being seen as condoning the unacceptable.

We were blessed with a relatively smooth Election Day, thanks be to God. Yet the narrow margins separating victory from defeat point to the continued polarization of our body politic. Some who were elected espouse discrimination against women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQI and gender-fluid folks, and oppose efforts to combat climate change. Some deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and support violent insurrection as a political strategy. Forgiveness is costly.

Are people who sow violence and division covered by Jesus’ prayer, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?” 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. How 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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