Father, Forgive Them

By Debie Thomas

The following is a reflection I gave at my church on Good Friday, 2014, exploring the first of Jesus' Last Seven Words: "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

           Why is the first word forgiveness? This is a real question.

           Jesus has just endured a night of abuse. He's been accused, abandoned, mocked, and misunderstood. He's been separated from his companions, robbed of his dignity, and beaten to within an inch of his life. Now he hangs on a cross, surrounded by people who hate him, and the first word he utters is a word of forgiveness.

           I'm tempted to dodge the "real question" with theology. Well of course, Jesus' first word was forgiveness. Wasn't that what his whole ministry was about? Wasn't it what he came to do in the first place? Forgive sinners? And isn't his job as our high priest to do exactly this — to stand in the gap and make intercession for us? And if something atoning happened at Calvary, then isn't forgiveness at the very heart of the Good Friday story? Of course the Son of God would use his final moments to practice what he preached. Of course he would speak a word of forgiveness.

           The theology isn't wrong. It's deep and mysterious and beautiful. But the danger for me is that I'll use it to protect myself. To step back into the cocoon of my humanness and say, "Yeah, well, Jesus was divine. He had a mission to fulfill, and an atonement to work out, and sure, he stayed true to his calling even as he was dying. That's admirable. But I'm not God."

           In preparing for this meditation, I Googled the word "forgiveness," and got something like 55 million hits. Obviously, it's a word we can't say enough about. Many of the articles I read online began by emphasizing what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not denial. It's not pretending that an offense doesn't matter, or that a wound doesn't hurt. Forgiveness isn't forgetting, or acting as if things don't have to change, or allowing ourselves to be victimized over and over again. Forgiveness isn't even the same thing as healing or reconciliation. Healing has its own timetable, and sometimes reconciliation isn't possible. Sometimes our lives depend on us severing ties with our offenders, even after we've forgiven them.

           So what did Jesus mean? What was he doing when he uttered this first of his seven last statements from the cross? I don't know for sure, but here's a possibility that gives me hope: maybe he was asking for help, and the help he needed was for himself. After all, according to the Gospel accounts, Jesus didn't make a declaration. He never announced to the crowds that their sins were absolved, or that his suffering wasn't a big deal, or that he felt warm and cuddly towards the soldiers gambling at his feet. In fact, he didn't even address the crowd; his first word was addressed to God, and it came in the form of a request. Maybe a plea. "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing."

           Some Greek scholars have argued that Jesus actually made this prayer several times as he awaited his death. Over and over again, like a mantra. "Father, forgive them. Father, forgive them. Father, forgive them." I like this possibility, because it suggests that forgiveness is not an event but an orientation, a posture we can't maintain on our own strength. What if Jesus was saying, "Father, I'm finding forgiveness so very difficult. It slips away from me, and I can't hang onto it without help. I need your help now. And now. And now again."

Crucifixion icon, Sinai, 8th century.

           In her memoir, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes that witholding forgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die. In less colorful prose, Nora Gallagher writes, "Forgiveness is a way to unburden oneself from the constant pressure of rewriting the past." And finally, in language I find very conforting, Henri Nouwen writes, "Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly, and so we need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. Forgiveness is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family."

           Here's why I struggle with Jesus' first word. It's not that I dislike forgiveness. It's that I want to make forgiveness the eighth word, or the twelfth, or the three-hundred-and-twenty-seventh. As in, "Hang on a second. I need to sit you down first. I need you to understand how badly you've hurt me, because the mess you've made is huge and complicated, and unless you get that, you won't feel appropriately sorry, and I won't feel appropriately vindicated. But don't worry. As soon as I know for sure that you're remorseful, I'll totally forgive you."

           Maybe Jesus' first word is forgiveness because it's the word that makes all the other words — words like hope, peace, and love — possible. If I'm consumed with my own pain, if I've made injury my identity, if I insist on foregrounding my rights and my anger in every interaction I have with people who hurt me, then I'm drinking poison, and the poison will kill me long before it does anything to my abusers. To pray Jesus' prayer is to say, "I choose to uncross my arms and unclench my fists. I choose to release myself from the tyranny of bitterness. I choose to give up my frenzied longing to be understood. And I choose to cast my hunger for justice deep into God's heart, because justice belongs to him, and he's the only one trustworthy enough to secure it."

           Jesus based his prayer of forgiveness on the ignorance of his attackers. "Forgive them — for they do not know what they are doing." What does it mean to forgive people not because they've comprehended their guilt, but because they're clueless? Isn't that a moral cop-out? Doesn't it let sinners off the hook too easily?

           Maybe. But here's another option: Maybe it's just the plain naked truth about who we are and how we function. Maybe I really don't know what I'm doing. Maybe, even when I think I'm at my most enlightened, my most discerning, my most self-aware, maybe even then: I can barely wrap my brain around the ways in which I harm myself, or you, or my spouse, or my children, or my neighborhood, or my church, or this planet. Maybe my vision is far more limited than I realize. Maybe at some level you and I can only be sacred mysteries to each other, and if that's the case, maybe our best bet in this life is to love each other poorly and forgive each other repeatedly.

           Christianity teaches me that God's forgiveness is a given. It's the rock solid foundation for all of his dealings with us. This is why, I think, forgiveness has to be the first word. It comes first. Before we know, before we understand, before we repent, Jesus' prayer assures us that forgiveness simply is. Yes, it's hard, and yes, it's costly, and yes, we'll mess it up. But it will save us. And it is ours.