1st Word of 7 Last Words
“Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.”
Mark 15:13-26, 29-32 | Luke 23:24
15:13 And they cried out again,
“Crucify Him.”
14 And Pilate said to them, “Why, what evil has He done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify Him.” 15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered Him to be crucified. 16 And the soldiers led Him away inside the palace (that is, the governor's headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. 17 And they clothed Him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on Him. 18 And they began to salute Him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 19 And they were striking His head with a reed and spitting on Him and kneeling down in homage to Him. 20 And when they had mocked Him, they stripped Him of the purple cloak and put His own clothes on Him. And they led Him out to crucify Him.
21 And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry His cross. 22 And they brought Him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). 23 And they offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He did not take it. 24 And they crucified Him and divided His garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. 25 And it was the third hour when they crucified Him. 26 And the inscription of the charge against Him read, “The King of the Jews.” 29 And those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, 30 save yourself, and come down from the cross!” 31 So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked Him to one another, saying, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with Him also reviled Him.
23:34 And Jesus said,
“Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.”
And they cast lots
to divide His garments.
1st Word Reflection Readings
For Jews and Gentiles alike in those days, a crucified person was as low and despised as it was possible to be. Crucifixion sent an unmistakable signal: this person that you see before you is not fit to live, not even human (as the Romans put it, such a person was damnatio ad bestias, meaning "condemned to the death of a beast"). The crosses were placed by the roadside as a form of public announcement: these miserable beings that you see before you are not of the same species as the rest of us. Those crowds understood that their role was to increase, by jeering and mocking, the degradation of those who had been thus designated unfit to live.
It is therefore of the upmost importance to note that in an era when crucifixion was still going on and was widely practiced throughout the Roman Empire, Christians were proclaiming a degraded, condemned, crucified person as the God, King, and Savior of the world. By any ordinary standard, and especially by religious standards, this was simply unthinkable. We need to make a conscious effort to understand that the Cross in reality is, by a very long way, the most irreligious, unspiritual object to find its way into the heart of faith. Crucifixion was shameful. Yet Jesus of all people did not deserve to be shamed. Whose shame is it, then?
Some of the most arresting paintings of the mockery of Jesus are unsparing in their depiction of the sheer viciousness and inhumanity of the men torturing Him. Yet if we are truly honest with ourselves this Good Friday, we see also within our own hearts the capacity, under certain circumstances, to engage in terrible acts, or to assign others to do terrible acts in our name while we wash our hands of them.
Whose shame is it that we see Jesus taking upon Himself? It is our shame. In the mocking of Jesus, in His death by torture, we see all of the absolute worst that we can do. And yet here is what we need to remember: on the Cross, Jesus prays and dies for people doing terrible things – it is for His enemies that He does all of this. This means that there is nothing that you or I could ever do, or say, or be, that would put us beyond the reach of Jesus. God’s mercy is ours through Him. From that sphere of divine power we hear these words today as though they were spoken for the first time, as though they were being spoken at this very moment by the living Spirit, spoken of each one of us:
Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.
+ Fleming Rutledge
It is the Second Person of the Trinity who asks, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The Son intimately addresses the Father in front of everyone. We look away, embarrassed by love so publicly displayed. Through the cross of Christ we are drawn into the mystery of the Trinity. This is God’s work on our behalf. Through Christ, we are made members of the only Kingdom governed by a politics of forgiveness and redemption.
To be so made part of God’s love strips us of all our presumed certainties, making possible lives lived in the confidence that Jesus, the only Son of God, alone has the right to ask the Father to forgive people like us who would kill Him rather than face our sin and death. That is why we are drawn to the cross, why we remember Jesus’s words, in the hope that we might be forgiven and offer to the world the forgiveness made ours through the cross of Christ.
Jesus prays for His executioners, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34). And in doing so, He sets a whole new standard, a whole new paradigm, of how His followers are to respond to those who hate them and kill them. Jesus was doing and modeling exactly what He had taught His disciples. How shocked they must have been when Jesus said, "Love your enemies ... bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (Luke 6:27-28). But Jesus does just that. He prays for those who are not merely cursing and persecuting Him, but are also those who nailed His hands and feet to planks of wood.
+ Christopher J.H. Wright
Reflection Song
By John Newton
1774 A.D.
Let us love and sing and
Let us praise the Savior's name.
He has hushed the laws loud thunder,
He has quenched Mt. Sinai's flame.
Let us love the Lord who bought us,
Pitied us when enemies;
Called us by His grace and taught us,
Gave us ears and gave us eyes.
He has washed us with His blood,
He has washed us with His blood,
He has washed us with His blood,
He has brought us close to God.
Next Post:
Christ is all,
Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan
