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Lenten
Noonday Preaching Series
Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
Good
Friday, Part 2
April 21, 2000
Father,
Forgive Them
The
Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor
Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy
Piedmont College
Demorest, Georgia
In
Luke's Gospel, Jesus asks no questions of God at the end. Far from believing
himself forsaken by God, he believes God is close enough to answer a prayer.
The first thing he asks, once his hands have been hammered down and he
has been lifted high above the crowd, is "Father, forgive them; for
they do not know what they are doing."
His concern is not for himself, at that point, but for those who are killing
him. They do not know what they are doing, he explains to God, and people
who don't know what they are doing should not be held accountable. Jesus
wants God to know that he has no case against them. Jesus wants all charges
dropped, only who are "they" exactly?
He can see them all from up there--the low ranking Roman soldiers who
were assigned the dirty work, as well as the officer who gave them their
orders. They are getting the bad taste out of their mouths by gambling
for his clothing. Shopping has always been a reliable distraction. One
of them has discovered that his feet are only a little smaller than Jesus'
feet. He really wants the sandals. Another has his eye on the tunic, which
still smells like the man hanging above them on the cross.
Luke says that some of the leaders of the people were also in the crowd,
so Jesus can see them too--people so caught between their love of God
and their fear of Rome that they don't know what to do, especially with
one of their own who has long seemed bent on self-destruction. At least
part of their job, these leaders of the people, is to keep Jews off Roman
crosses, but this particular Jew has stirred up so many people that he
has made himself impossible to defend. Better him than all of his followers.
Better to let Rome make an example of the one than of the many.
Who Jesus cannot see from his high perch are any of his friends. They
are way out on the edges of the crowd, Luke says--all of his acquaintances,
including the women who had followed him from Galilee. If they stood any
closer, they would be at grave risk. One word out of their mouths and
anyone who heard them would know they are Galileans--the same way the
servant girl identified Peter at the high priest's house the night before.
So they do not stand close. They stand far away, keeping a safe distance
between themselves and their teacher--who is, after all, beyond help.
"Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."
With so many choices, whom does Jesus mean? Judas, the chief priests and
scribes, Pilate, Herod, the Roman soldiers, the disciples? Furthermore,
if this sacrifice is truly God's will, then why does anyone need forgiving
at all? They are simply playing their assigned parts, so that God's will
may be done.
Tragically, the Christian church has not spent much time pondering those
questions. From the very beginning, the answer has been easy: Jesus was
talking about the Jews--the Jews who betrayed him, the Jews who condemned
him, the Jews who turned him over to he Romans to be killed. These are
the people who are in deep need of God's forgiveness, or so the legend
goes.
Because of that legend, there is a Jewish history of Good Friday as well
as a Christian one. According to Jewish people I know, today has long
been one of the most frightening days of the year. In parts of eastern
Europe during the last century, Jews knew better than to leave their homes
on Good Friday, when Christians stoked up by the passion narrative they
had just heard in church poured out into the streets to do as much damage
as possible in the Jewish part of town. If you read Jewish history after
Charlemagne, the litany of violence is simply astounding:
1096 The
First Crusade is launched, with a slaughter of Jews in Rhineland
1190 Jews are massacred in England
1233 The Inquisition offers Jews a choice: convert to Christianity or
die
1290 Jews are expelled from England
1348 Jews are burned in Switzerland for "causing" the Black
Death
1394 Jews are expelled from France
1492 Jews are expelled from Spain
1648 The institution of the Jewish ghetto begins in Venice
1881 Pogroms against Jews are launched in Russia
1938 Krystallnacht. By morning, synagogues are burning all over Nazi Germany.
1939-1945 Six million Jews die in Europe, including 1 and 1/2 million
children
Any way you
do the arithmetic, Jesus' death has been avenged--millions of times over--by
Christians who have somehow twisted his gospel of loving your enemies
and doing good to those who hate you into a two thousand year long nightmare
of racism and revenge. The deep irony is that many of these Jews--when
they have been thrown out of town, locked up in ghettos, reviled, beaten
up, raped, and left for dead--have turned to the Bible seeking some meaning
for their suffering. The psalm with as many Jewish fingerprints on it
as any is Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
We have crucified him over and over and over again--or stood way out on
the edges of the crowd while someone else did--keeping a safe distance
between ourselves and the one on the cross--who is, after all, beyond
help.
"Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."
Whom was Jesus talking about? Us. He was talking about us. He even gave
us the benefit of the doubt, by assuming that we have no idea how much
harm we do--by our inaction as well as by our action, by our collusion
as well as by our outright contempt for those whom we declare "the
enemies of Christ." How often, in our attempts to defend him, have
we ended up killing him instead?
If God answered his prayer from the cross, which we should fervently hope
God did--if we have indeed been forgiven, then that is the end of it--the
end of all the blaming, all the scape-goating, all the getting-even, all
the revenge. He died to put an end to all of that. He volunteered to be
the last victim, so that his followers would never make victims out of
anyone else again. He even gave us a prayer to pray if we should ever
find our own hands hammered down: "Father, forgive them; for they
do not know what they are doing."
Copyright ©2000
Barbara Brown Taylor
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