Good Friday Reflection 2 of 4

Father forgive them

Read Luke 23:32-34

There is, in Auschwitz, a large wooden cross, planted in the ground. I only saw it towards the end of my visit and it took my breath away. Why is it there? The ground it is planted in is saturated with the ashes of Jews, but also disabled people, gay men & women, travellers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roman Catholics, political prisoners – and so on. Although the regime that perpetrated this crime is seen by all civilized society as evil, the nation it represented was part of Christian Europe and this slaughter was the culmination of centuries of the persecution of Jewish people within Western society. The dichotomy of that cross immediately struck me. Planted in this soil, might it represent the triumph of Christian oppression over the marginalised of our world? No, surely not! It must represent the suffering Christ standing alongside the victims of the holocaust. But for a moment, in my mind, it could have meant either.

The cross stands as a challenge to us, who seek to follow our Crucified Lord, for it judges our actions, our motives and our assumptions. We stand judged by our actions, when those actions are set alongside the one who, throughout his life, lived focussed so intently on God. So we hit out. We cry “Crucify!”. We, ourselves, bang in the nails of torture and death.

If we think of places like Auschwitz, and the holocaust, there is a right moral judgement to be made against the regime that perpetrated such a heinous crime. Yet in all of us there is the potential to marginalise others, to dehumanise them, to choose ethnic cleansing, even if we do it by excluding others, rather than killing them.

My point is this. There are many evil people in our world, and we ourselves must stand against such evil and work for what is good and right and just. But we also need to acknowledge that we are part of fallen humanity. It was we whose response to the Word made flesh was to crucify him.

And as we bang in the nails, Jesus prays for us – “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”. As we crucify this planet, destroying ecosystems, polluting the atmosphere and raping the land, he prays, “Father forgive them”; as we allow injustice for others become the price for our own self comfort, he prays, “Father, forgive them”; as the number of billionaires expands, whist 900million in our world go to bed hungry each night, he prays, “Father, forgive them”; as we kill and maim in religious acts of war, supposedly in the name of the Lord of Life, he prays “Father forgive them”; as we marginalise others, devalue others, dehumanise others, so that in places like Auschwitz the crematoria become just places of waste disposal, he prays, “Father, forgive them”.

Perhaps we live simple lives, that can seem far removed from the worst atrocities of our broken world, yet we all live fallen lives – that is, we fall far short of the fullness of life, lived in relationship with God, that is his intention for each and every one of us.

And as we waste precious moments of our lives, as we fail to see the face of Christ in every encounter of our lives and every neighbour in need, so Jesus prays for us – “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”.

Here, on the cross, we see the catastrophic result of a world that is so broken that we will even crucify God himself. And he forgives us. He forgives the broken inadequacies of those who nail him to this wood. He reaches out for all time for the generations who will come after, even we ourselves. And, in the broken failures of our own lives, he already speaks out to forgive what will be the inevitable consequences of our actions. “Father, forgive them”.

We come to this cross, not because we hope for forgiveness, but because we are drawn to the one who, despite our failings, is already forgiving us. Here we find one, who does not reject us for the people we are, but forgives us for being the people we are. And in that forgiveness we are drawn to the one who can bring us healing, new life and new hope. 

It was you who put Christ on the cross – it was me. Despite what we do, he forgives us. What does that mean for you? How does that touch your heart? What does it mean to be forgiven? How will that transform your life?

These questions lead on to another one. If it is our own sinfulness that nails Christ to this cross, and yet Christ forgives what we are doing, then how can we live a Christian life without forgiving others? At 10.43am on 8^th November 1987, a bomb exploded during Enniskillen's Remembrance Day parade in Northern Ireland.

Gordon Wilson, and his daughter Marie were buried in the rubble. Gordon was injured, but Marie’s injuries were fatal. Later, Gordon described his final conversation with Marie, as she died under the rubble. Gordon’s response to the bombing was "I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge" and, although many found it hard to understand his response, he forgave those who had planted the bomb. He went on to be a great peacemaker in Northern Ireland.

It is a challenging story, but it is one what flows from what it means to stand at the foot of Christ’s cross. Father, forgiven them, for they do not know what they are doing. If it is our sin that nails Christ to the cross, yet we are forgiven for what we are doing, then that must lead us to be people who, knowing what it is to be forgiven, bring forgiveness and reconciliation to others. I put the question, What does it mean to be forgiven? But this leads to another question, Who is it that I need to forgive?