To download the text and/or audio file for this week's sermon, please go to the "Sermon Archive" page and follow the instructions you'll find there.

For a study guide to prepare for next week's sermon, please click HERE

A WORD OF PARDON

Echoes from Calvary, Part 1

Luke 23:32-34

February 25, 2007 – First Sunday in Lent

Pastor Bob Sanders

The Foot of the Cross

A few weeks ago Debbie and I were having dinner with some old friends in their home in Carmel, California.  We hadn’t seen Kristi and Perry in a number of years, so it was a wonderful time of catching up.  We were reminiscing about whatever happened to various mutual friends, and at one point the conversation turned to a person we all knew and loved, a woman who has drifted away from her faith moorings.  We speculated on what might have caused this, and what we could do to help her find her way back to the Lord.  Perry listened to us talk about various approaches we could use and then he said quietly, “I don’t think there’s much any of us can do for her.”  We all stared at him in silence, and then he said something that has stayed with me ever since.  He said, “She has to come to the foot of the cross.  She has to get to that point where she says, ‘I can’t do this on my own.’  She has to find out for herself who God is and what he’s done for her.  She has to come to the foot of the cross.  We all do.”

I think he’s right.  And during this Lenten season, I want us to gather at the foot of the cross and listen to the final words of the One who hangs there.  We begin a series of sermons entitled “Echoes from Calvary: The Seven Last Words of Christ.” 

It will not be easy.  To understand these last “words” or sayings of Jesus we must watch carefully and listen closely.  What we see and hear will disturb our minds.  It will break our hearts.  But finally I pray it will bring us to our knees in grateful worship at this “love so amazing, so divine.”  We see what the prophet Isaiah foretold: the Son of God “wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.” 1  We hear his dying words spoken through teeth clenched in pain.  And to our amazement, what we hear are not words of vengeance or rage or even self-pity.  What we hear are words of pardon, assurance, compassion, anguish and suffering, victory, and trust.

We’ll focus on each of these words during the six Sundays of Lent and on Good Friday.  There is a study guide available for the series, and you can find a copy in the Gathering Area or on line at our website.  We begin this morning with the first word, a word of pardon.  Our text is brief – Luke 23 beginning at verse 32:

Luke 23:32-34

32 Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him.  33 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.  34 [[Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."]] And they cast lots to divide his clothing.

Shocking Words

Luke is the only Gospel writer who records this saying, and you may be wondering about those double-brackets around Jesus’ words.  That’s the way it’s printed in most Bibles, along with a footnote to let you know that a number of the earliest copies of Luke left out this verse.  Why is that?  Well, remember the oldest copies we have of the Gospels were all done by hand.  Scholars believe that some of the Christian copyists in the second century couldn’t stomach the idea that Jesus would forgive his executioners.  It was too shocking, so some of them left it out. 2

(Before we condemn them, let’s remember it’s easy to do that, even today.  It’s easy for us to leave out or at least skip over the parts of the Bible we find disturbing, the parts that shock us, the parts that make us uncomfortable.) 

Thank goodness a number of these scribes left it in.  All of the last words of Jesus are powerful and precious, but none captures the essence of the Gospel, the very heart of God, as powerfully as this one:

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

One of the problems we have is that, unlike the ancient scribes who were shocked by what they read, we’ve heard the story of the crucifixion so many times the words lose their ability to shock us.  Even if we’ve seen Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, after a while we forget, we grow numb to the agony that took place here. 

This last week I turned to Phil Yancey’s book, The Jesus I Never Knew.  If you’ve not read this, I encourage you to get a copy.   One of the things he does so well is bring to life the story of Good Friday.  He helps me appreciate something of the pain and humiliation Jesus endured on the cross.

You remember it began with a trumped-up trial.  There wasn’t sufficient evidence to convict Jesus so the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, concluded Jesus was innocent and decided to let him go.  But when the crowd turned against him and began shouting, “Crucify him!  Crucify him!” Pilate caved in and washed his hands. 

He handed Jesus over to the Roman soldiers, who blindfolded and beat him, then stripped him and flogged him almost to death, taunting him the entire time.  Yancey helps us feel what this is like by recalling another story.  Here’s how he puts it:

In a memoir of the years before World War II, Pierre Van Paassen tells of an act of humiliation by Nazi storm troopers who had seized an elderly Jewish rabbi and dragged him to headquarters.  In the far end of the same room, two colleagues were beating another Jew to death, but the captors of the rabbi decided to have some fun with him.  They stripped him naked and commanded that he preach the sermon he had prepared for the coming Sabbath in the synagogue.  The rabbi asked if he could wear his yarmulke, and the Nazis, grinning, agreed.  It added to the joke.  The trembling rabbi proceeded to deliver in a raspy voice his sermon on what it means to walk humbly with God, all the while being poked and prodded by the hooting Nazis, and all the while hearing the last cries of his neighbor at the end of the room.

And Yancey continues,

When I read the gospel accounts of the imprisonment, torture, and execution of Jesus, I think of that naked rabbi standing humiliated in a police station.  Even after watching scores of movies on the subject, and reading the Gospels over and over, I still cannot fathom the indignity, the shame endured by God’s Son on earth, stripped naked, flogged, spat on, struck in the face, garlanded with thorns. 3

After that, they took the heavy crossbeam and put it on his lacerated back and made him carry it up to a hill – Golgotha, sometimes called “The Skull.”  Here they took nails and drove them through his hands into the crossbeam.  Then they lifted him up and attached the crossbeam to a fixed vertical beam, bent his legs and pounded nails into his feet.  Then they waited.  Waited for him to quit writhing.  Waited for him to quit breathing. 

It was a horrible way to die.  So horrible no Roman citizen could be executed on a cross.  It was reserved for non-Romans of the lowest classes or those who had committed the worst crimes.  It was also intended as a deterrent, so crosses were placed in very public settings so everyone who came by could see the victims hanging there naked and dying.

They didn’t die from loss of blood.  They died mostly from exhaustion.  They finally lost the ability to take another breath.  Strong people could last a couple days on a cross.  Many lasted only a matter of hours.  That’s what Jesus is going through when we hear him say, “Father, forgive them.”

We Were There

There are two ways for a preacher to handle this saying.  One is to put us all into Jesus’ shoes.  That is, to think of what Jesus says here as an example of how we ought to behave.  And that’s certainly appropriate.  Scripture tells us to imitate Christ, to make him our example and try to live as he did. 

So we could look at this saying from that viewpoint.  And in fact these words became a model for Christian martyrs down through the ages.  Look at the book of Acts, chapter seven, and you’ll hear Stephen praying for those who are stoning him to death, asking the Lord to “not hold this sin against them.” 4  And there are lots of stories of Christians who were persecuted and martyred for their faith who used their final breath to pray for and even forgive those who killed them.

And we would do well to think about what it means for us to be injured unfairly and not retaliate, not respond in kind.  In an age of terror and retribution, what does it mean to pray for our enemies, to ask God to forgive them?  “I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve uttered a really good prayer of the soul of Saddam Hussein or Osama ben Laden.” 5  What about you?  Have we ever asked God to forgive the people who deeply hurt us, abused us, defamed us or robbed us of dignity and joy? 

We could look at this saying from that angle, but there’s another way to look at it.  And that is not so much to see ourselves in Jesus’ shoes, but rather to see ourselves in the shoes of the people Jesus is praying for.  To see ourselves as the Roman soldiers who pound the nails into Jesus’ hands.  To see ourselves as the religious leaders who manipulate the crucifixion.  To see ourselves in the crowd of bystanders who stand around and do nothing to help.  To see ourselves in the disciples who aren’t there because they’ve run away out of fear and perhaps embarrassment. 

We need to see ourselves as the them Jesus has in mind when he says, “Father, forgive them.”

You may object and say, “I wasn’t there.  I didn’t do any of that stuff.  I didn’t take part in the crucifixion.”  With all due respect, I disagree.  I submit we have a common link with Pilate’s bloody soldiers and Israel’s blind leaders, with those “innocent” bystanders and those faithless disciples.  The common link is that, like them, we all sin and fall short of God’s glory. 

And that’s what put Jesus on the cross – sin, their sin, your sin, my sin.  That’s why he’s hanging there.  To pay the death penalty for our sin.  The old spiritual says it so well: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”  And the Bible’s answer is emphatically, “Yes, we were there.”  Our sins contribute to his death on the cross. 

The hymn we sang a moment ago puts it even more pointedly.  The second verse of “Ah, Holy Jesus” asks:

Who was the guilty?

Who brought this upon You?

            And then this answer:

It is my treason, Lord, that has undone You.

‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied You;

I crucified You. 6

It was my treason and treachery.  It was my selfish fears and my secret infidelities.  My hoarding of this world’s goods and my deafness to the cries of the needy.  My careless words and my complicity in systems of violence and oppression.  My rebellion against God’s law and my resisting his saving grace. 

Stop and let that staggering thought sink in.  Who was the guilty?  Who brought this upon You?  ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus.  I crucified You.

Preemptive Forgiveness

But then from the cross comes this word of pardon so expansive it blows away all our categories of mercy.  A word for Roman soldiers and Jewish Sanhedrin, yes.  A word for callous bystanders and cowardly disciples, yes.  A word for us, yes.  For those who know we were there, those who know something of the terrible wrong we’ve done.  And – dare I say it? – a word for those who are clueless, those who don’t yet understand how much they need this pardon.

Jesus says, “Father, forgive them.”  Forgive who?  Forgive those who recognize they’ve done wrong and repent and beg for mercy?  Well, sure.  But the amazing thing, the scandalous thing (and one of the reasons, I’m convinced, those early scribes left these words out) is that Jesus prays for those who haven’t recognized their mistakes, those haven’t repented of their sins – not yet, anyway.  “Father, forgive them,” he prays, “the ones who don’t know what they’re doing.”

I used to think of forgiveness as a kind of transaction.  If I’m aware of my wrongdoing and willing to admit it, then I can go to God, say I’m sorry and God will say, “OK, I forgive you.”

God and I have this deal.

But what Jesus says is just the opposite.  It’s preemptive forgiveness. 7  Jesus prays to God the Father, “Please forgive these people who didn’t even know that they’re doing anything wrong let alone repented of it.  Father, I’m asking you to forgive them long before they ever turn back to You.”

What do you think?  Does God forgive people who have not yet repented?  Who haven’t grasped that they’ve done wrong? 

Here’s how I see it.  When you and I sin, we set up a kind of moral barrier between us and God.  And for God to forgive us is like God sticking his hand through that barrier, reaching out in mercy to us and saying, “I still want the relationship.”  But God’s outstretched hand doesn’t by itself solve the problem.  We have to grab that hand and accept the offer.  But God always makes the first move.  God’s hand is extended even before we recognize we need it, even before we realize we’ve done wrong, even before we’ve repented. 8

Preemptive forgiveness means God is willing to forgive even before we ask.  Think of all the times in the Gospels when Jesus would say to people, “Your sins are forgiven.”  The strange thing is that almost nobody ever asked him to do that, nobody actually asked him for forgiveness.  But Jesus did it anyway.  Why?  Because Jesus knew that unless he made the first move, we’d never get right with God.  Unless we knew he was willing to forgive us, we’d be too scared to ask. 

“Father, forgive them.”  That’s the first word.  “They don’t know what they’re doing.”  That’s the second.  Your relationship with God isn’t based on what you know or don’t know, what you’ve done or failed to do.  It’s based on God – God’s amazing grace, God’s scandalous love, God’s preemptive forgiveness. 

Some of you here today are thinking that you have wandered so far and sinned so badly that God’s pardon couldn’t possibly reach you.  You’re thinking, “After what I’ve been, after the things I’ve done, there’s no way God’s grace could ever be for me.”  Listen.  If you have thoughts like that, you need to bring them to foot of the cross.  Never in human history was evil more concentrated, more absolutely evil, than in this terrible event.  And yet, in the midst of this most evil act, this crucifixion, Jesus says, “Father, forgive…” 

That means you can’t out-sin God’s desire to forgive you.  You can’t do it.  Even when the prodigal son had broken his father’s heart and gone off to the far country, his father got up every morning and scanned the horizon, hoping to see his son coming back.  Before the prodigal son saw the father, the father saw him and ran to meet him.  No matter what you think you’ve done, you cannot outdistance God’s forgiveness.  You can’t make God give up on you or stop loving you or quit wanting you back.  Sorry, but you don’t have that in your power. 

Come to the cross.  Hear this word of pardon, and dare to believe it’s for you: “Father, forgive them.  They don’t know what they’re doing.”

I assure you: this is the word of the Lord.

1. Isaiah 53:5.
2. Martin E. Marty writes, “The scribes did not have the generous soul that their Jesus here revealed, so they cut the saying out of their copies.”  Echoes From Calvary, Richard Young editor (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), p.66.
3. Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995), p.199.
4. Acts 7:69.
5. William H. Willimon, Thank God It’s Friday (Abingdon, 2006), p.5.
6. Johann Heermann, 1630, trans. Robert Bridges, 1899, “Ah, Holy Jesus,” The Presbyterian Hymnal (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p.93.
7. Willimon,  op.cit., pp.6ff.
8. Jeff Van Duzer in a sermon “Father, Forgive Them,” preached to Bethany Presbyterian Church, Seattle, WA on March 23, 2003.