Father Forgive Them

Mercy disrupts.

It stops the story.

It changes the direction of the narrative.

It has the power to end the cycle.

It has the power to saves lives.

Mercy disrupts – yet we contest it.
And still we find cause to justify to ourselves why we should neither practice it, nor be included within the scope of its grace.

“Father forgive them. For they know not what they do”.

These words of Jesus haunt me, because we should know what we are doing. Since Cain and Abel, we have known that the shedding of blood – not least innocent blood – is not the answer to conflict.

We should know better but again and again we choose to remain ignorant,
to avoid the painful truth which is laid out before our eyes.
Or, in Jesus’ case, laid bare on a cross.

We should know better, and yet, it seems, we conveniently forget.
Or we stand by with indifference or fear, and do little when we see injustice wrought against our brothers and sisters the world over.
“Father forgive us, for we know not what we do – and we certainly don’t know how to fix it.”

Whenever I hear or read the Passion narrative, I become a bystander. I hear it in abstract as though it is happening to someone else’s community, to someone else’s family or friend. I struggle to enter into the story, to find my place as a character within it… most-likely because my ego tries to protect me from acknowledging that I would probably be doing exactly the same in the real event: standing by, looking on in horror and feeling powerless. Or, worse, I might be an active accuser or it could be my family member or my friend being tortured and killed.

In some ways I have the privilege of being an observer. In a way that billions of people in the world right now do not. Their lives, their hopes, their relationships have been disrupted and ended by unimaginable cruelty while we stand by shocked and helpless seeing their suffering.

Father forgive us, for we know not what to do.

Jesus’ merciful plea to his Father is omitted from some manuscripts.
Yet the words and the tone are wholly consistent with the character of Christ which Luke portrays; it is echoed in Acts by Stephen as he is martyred and we hear it even today, as those on the most brutal end of other’s violence, pray for their oppressors and bless those who persecute them. Mercy disrupts.
It does not fit our expectation of how to respond in the face of hatred and evil – but when did Jesus ever fit our expectation?

Perhaps mercy of this magnitude is simply too scandalous to take in.
Perhaps it is easier to remain a bystander and not enter into the uncomfortable truth of the story or let ourselves be changed by it.
Perhaps it is easier to forget.

But, this week above all, we choose instead to ‘remember’.

… To enter into the story and remember its detail.
… To rehearse the narrative in our own community.
… To share in the Passion and compassion of the One whose mercy overcame
     hate and whose love overcame death.

We can choose to remember, because we know how the story ends.

We can live through its horrors, because we are not without hope.

This week, we are being taken on a journey. A journey which begins with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem; which joins him at his last meal; which follows him into the garden of agony and betrayal; which sees him flogged and condemned before the courts; and which watches in horror as the One on whom all our hope is pinned is, himself, pinned to a tree.

We will travel the journey of the worst humanity can do – and of the infinite mercy of God which redeems our humanity and restores it to us.

But to do so, we have to choose to remember. To be present and go on this journey of redemption. We have to lay down the privilege of being a bystander and enter into an active remembrance that demands our participation and self-examination.

This week is not just recollection of an historical event, it is an expanded version of how we remember as a community every time we celebrate the eucharist, what God has done for us in Jesus.

It is what we call an anamnesis – it is an active entering into the story and allowing it to shape us, to disrupt us and transform us and the world in which we move.
So walk with us through this Holy Week and choose to remember God’s mercy; because mercy disrupts, it changes the narrative, it has the power to end the cycle, it has the power to save lives.

Amen.