For They Do Not Know What They Do

32 There were also two others, criminals, led with Him to be put to death. 33 And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. 34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:32-34a, NKJV).

These words of Jesus puzzle me: they do not know what they do. But surely, no matter how we try to rehabilitate him, Judas knew that he was betraying a good and holy man into the hands of evil and violent men, all for the sake of thirty pieces of silver. Surely, Pilate knew, even as he washed his hands of the whole Jesus affair, that he was signing the death warrant of an innocent man, all for the sake of political expediency. Surely, Peter knew, even before the cock crowed, that his words of denial were lies told for the sake of personal safety: he did know the man and he did know his own cowardice in that crucial moment. What then can Jesus’ words mean: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do”?

Could they mean this: that the scope and impact of sin go far beyond our ability to know and understand? Might it be that my sin – no matter how trivial it seems – further subjects all creation to futility ( cf Rom 8:19-25) and makes me complicit in earthquake, tsunami, famine, drought and all unnatural “natural disasters”? Might it be that my sin – no matter how trivial it seems – cedes spiritual territory in the Kingdom of God to the Rebel and Enemy and makes me complicit in the lies he spreads and the snares he sets, makes me complicit in the sum total of evil in the world? Might it be that my sin – no matter how trivial it seems – ripples both forward and backward in time and makes me complicit in the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide and in all such unspeakable acts that yet may occur? I do not know, and that is precisely the point: I do not know. God alone – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world – knows the full weight and scope and impact of my sin. And so he prayed, for me no less than for those who crucified him on that great and terrible day, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

I am a sinner; that I know. But, in the eyes of the law – really, any reasonable human law – my sins do not rise to the level of capital crimes. The death penalty is not even on the table. And yet, the cross proclaims otherwise. My sins, judged trivial by the courts of human justice and popular opinion – and, God forgive me, even by myself – caused our Lord Jesus to spread out his arms on the hard wood of the cross. My sin resulted the in capital punishment of God incarnate; I am guilty of deicide. I had no idea. I did not know. And that, again, is precisely the point. And so Jesus prayed, for me no less than for those who crucified him on that great and terrible day, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

While ignorance is no excuse, I suspect it is a great mercy. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer contains these lines in the Eucharistic prayer of confession:

ALMIGHTY God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.

If the limited knowledge we have of our sins is “grievous unto us,” if the “burden of them is intolerable,” then how could we possibly live under the weight of full knowledge? Ignorance is surely a grace-filled bliss. Thanks be to God that we do not know what we do. We need only know that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who takes away our sins committed in ignorance. Thanks be to God that our Lord Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

As We Forgive

‘Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

The individualization of faith is a persistent problem in Western theology – the emphasis on the personal to the neglect of the corporate. “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” is the prime evangelical inquiry posed to each individual. There seems to be no corporate counterpart, however: “Have you, as a church, accepted Jesus Christ as your corporate Lord and Savior?” I have never heard that question, or any equivalent, asked.

Yet, scripture surely emphasizes the corporate as much as it does the individual. The narrative structure of the salvation story is corporate. God forms a family from Abraham and a people for himself and works cosmic salvation through Israel. Jesus comes preaching not personal salvation but the citizenship in the Kingdom of God. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit breathes life into individuals to form the church. The triune nature of God and of salvation history is inherently corporate.

St. Paul champions the corporate and unapologetically situates the individual within the corporate context of the church, as this extended selection from 1 Corinthians 12 shows.

But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it (1 Cor 12:18-27, NRSV).

If one member suffers, all suffer together with it. Every individual action has corporate implications. Might the same hold true for sin? If one member sins, all sin together with it? I do not want to press this too far and eliminate individual responsibility, but neither do I wish to minimize the corporate effects of sin. It is simply not possible for an individual member of the body of Christ to sin without harming the entire body, without enmeshing the entire body in the consequences of that sin. Perhaps you have seen a church rent asunder by the sin of an individual, making corporate and public what was thought to be individual and private?

If sin is ultimately a corporate affair, then, forgiveness must also be corporate. If a member of the body sins against me and I refuse to forgive, then I bind that sin to the very body of which I am part. My refusal to forgive binds my brother’s sin to me and to the church of which we are both members. I cannot be forgiven if I am unwilling to forgive. Forgiveness of others is not an arbitrary prerequisite to my own forgiveness; it is the only forward into my own forgiveness. I cannot loose sin from myself by binding it to other members of the body to which I belong.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. This is not a bargain we make with God; I will forgive only so God will then forgive me. It is, rather, the very way in which God forgives. Unbinding my brother through forgiveness, looses his sin from the body and thus from me. It cannot be otherwise. In the body of Christ, nothing is purely individual – neither sin nor forgiveness. Thus, we confess our sin not only to God and not only to a priest, but to the whole body of Christ. The bidding to Confession of Sin in Morning Prayer (BCP 79) embodies this corporate aspect of confession and forgiveness:

Dearly beloved, we have come together in the presence of Almighty God our heavenly Father, to set forth his praise, to hear his holy Word, and to ask, for ourselves and on behalf of others, those things that are necessary for our life and our salvation. And so that we may prepare ourselves in heart and mind to worship him, let us kneel in silence, and with penitent and obedient hearts confess our sins, that we may obtain forgiveness by his infinite goodness and mercy. Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

Following this bidding, we confess that we have sinned and we pray that God will have mercy on us. Through our incorporation into Christ, we become more part of one another than we can begin to imagine. Through the mercy of God, forgive this sinner please, even as I also forgive you.

The Undue Weight of Forgiveness

Anyone who has lived fully within the church has been both blessed and wounded by that relationship, sometimes, it seems, in about equal measure. It is true for any intimate human relationship, of course: friendship, marriage, family. The ability to wound is proportional to the ability to bless.

Some wounds inflicted by the church are irreparable; the injury cannot be undone and, in many cases, the damage cannot be mitigated. The harsh word spoken and received cannot be retracted. The crucial absence cannot later be filled. The broken vow cannot be bridged.

In such cases the church offers not repair, but redemption – the recovery of relationship pawned through intent or negligence, mortgaged through anger or selfishness. Such redemption is costly to both parties, but unduly and disproportionately so to the wounded. The one who sinned must confess and repent. While this is blessedly injurious to the sinful ego, it is, in some sense, merely an acknowledgment of the facts of the matter – “I acted wrongly; I hurt you.” – and a commitment to go and sin no more – “With God’s help I will not do so again.” With this confession and repentance, the burden of that guilt is unduly and unfairly placed fully upon the one already wounded. The pain of the injury is exacerbated by the obligation to forgive and the sure knowledge that only in forgiveness lies healing. How much easier it would seem if the perpetrator were intransigent. Then wounds could be nursed and grudges held with self-righteous justification. But repentance? Repentance adds insult to injury. Now all eyes are on the wounded one, not just in sympathy, but in expectation. Will the victim forgive as Jesus forgave? It is a heavy weight that can be laid down only with a broken heart.

I reflect on these things because, like you, I have wounded, because I have been wounded, and because I have seen those I love wounded. I reflect on these things in the midst of Great Lent, the season of woundedness and forgiveness. Protopresbyter Alexander Schemann writes:

In the Orthodox Church, the last Sunday before Great Lent – the day on which, at Vespers, Lent is liturgically announced and inaugurated – is called Forgiveness Sunday. On the morning of that Sunday, at the Divine Liturgy, we hear the words of Christ:

"If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses..." (Mark 6:14-15)

Then after Vespers – after hearing the announcement of Lent in the Great Prokeimenon: "Turn not away Thy face from Thy child for I am afflicted! Hear me speedily! Draw near unto my soul and deliver it!", after making our entrance into Lenten worship, with its special memories, with the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian, with its prostrations – we ask forgiveness from each other, we perform the rite of forgiveness and reconciliation. And as we approach each other with words of reconciliation, the choir intones the Paschal hymns, filling the church with the anticipation of Paschal joy.

What is the meaning of this rite? Now, forgiveness stands at the very center of Christian faith and of Christian life because Christianity itself is, above all, the religion of forgiveness. God forgives us, and His forgiveness is in Christ, His Son, Whom He sends to us, so that by sharing in His humanity we may share in His love and be truly reconciled with God. Indeed, Christianity has no other content but love. And it is primarily the renewal of that love, a return to it, a growth in it, that we seek in Great Lent, in fasting and prayer, in the entire spirit and the entire effort of that season. Thus, truly forgiveness is both the beginning of, and the proper condition for the Lenten season.[1]

Forgiveness entails suffering and a hidden martyrdom, but also healing and exaltation. As St. Paul writes:

I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church (Col 1:24).

What can be lacking in the afflictions of Christ? Only the embrace by each wounded one of His suffering by taking up the heavy burden of the cross of another’s repentance and carrying it to the Golgotha of forgiveness.

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

[1] Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, Forgiveness Sunday, accessed 3/16/11 at http://www.schmemann.org/byhim/forgivenesssunday.html

As We Forgive

Two years ago my community was shocked by the kidnap, rape, torture, and murder of a young couple. The brutality of the crimes was and is almost unimaginable to those who do not know the depth of darkness in the human spirit enslaved by our ancient foe. Since that time -- and particularly now as the defendants are being tried, convicted, and sentenced -- we have been confronted with issues of justice, vengeance, and forgiveness. I find an article by Kh. Frederica Mathewes-Green helpful -- a review of the doumentary film, As We Forgive, on the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and the struggle for forgiveness.

As We Forgive