Crucifixion--Forgiveness

Luke 23:26-43

“As they led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals--one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.” The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

No one, to test the orthodoxy of another’s faith, ever asks; “Do you believe in crucifixion?” Often people do not believe in God. People are skeptical about miracles. People distrust testimonies about spiritual experiences. People question the resurrection. People doubt the power of prayer. Many scoff at the possibility of a virgin birth or a whale swallowing a man or a flood covering the earth. But I have never known anyone question crucifixion. No one has ever asked me the question, “Did Jesus really die on a Roman cross?” Non-Christian sources testify to the crucifixion. The horrors of crucifixion are all too real, and everybody knows it. We live in a world that crucifies its saints, and everybody knows it.

Yet it is not just the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, that no one doubts. No one also doubts that other human beings have been and are being crucified.

Martyred apostles
Tortured enemies of the state
Abused children
Persecuted minorities
Oppressed nationalities
The Jews in Germany
The Armenians in Turkey
The Native Americans in the United States
The Anabaptists in 16th century Europe
The gruesome history of crucifixion goes on and on and on...

The New Testament encourages us to think of crucifixion in this broader way when we are told to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. We think of people with terrible burdens to bear as carrying their crosses. Any time an innocent person experiences unreasonable suffering we may speak of crucifixion. However, I want to propose today that not all unreasonable suffering of the innocent is crucifixion. Some unreasonable suffering, tragically, sadly, never becomes anything more than suffering, misery, despair, affliction. Some adversity remains only adversity. It has no meaning. There is no redemptive or transformational value. No one learns anything from the pain. In no way is the misery turned into any good of any kind.

What is the difference between simple misery and the misery of crucifixion? What transforms some undeserved and unreasonable suffering into crucifixion; crucifixion that leads to resurrection, redeems, transmutes, converts, makes all things new?

I gave you the answer to this question in my sermon last Sunday. The answer is

Gethsemane. The answer is surrender. For millions of people, suffering, misery, tragedy remain only suffering, misery and tragedy because they do not, will not or cannot go to Gethsemane. At Gethseinane we struggle with God and learn to surrender our wills to God’s will. At Gethsemane the battle that occurs in the darkness of the night as we strive with God, like Job strove with God, as we wrestle with God, like Jacob wrestled with God, at Gethsemane we decide that God is the author of our lives and we are going to trust the story God is writing for us rather than the one we would write for ourselves. At Gethsemane we surrender to God and tell God that whatever God has in mind is O.K. with us. Whatever script God writes, be it:

disease death divorce
failure betrayal rejection
discrimination persecution
sin addiction weakness

We will not despair. We will no longer rage. We will no longer hold on to our bitterness or our grudges. We will no longer endlessly rehearse the wrongs that have been done to us. We let it all go because we know that God has authored our lives and God knows the way across this wilderness--and we will follow wherever God leads.

The choice is yours and the choice is mine. Everyone experiences unreasonable suffering sometime. The suffering of innocents is of epidemic proportions in the human family. The only choice we have is between meaningless misery and crucifixion. To surrender to the flow of events in our lives, to believe that the Author of our lives can rewrite the script and make even this tragedy meaningful; this is the way, the only way, for wholeness to replace the brokenness we have experienced. It is an extraordinarily difficult way, however, because for the most part we find it easier to nurse grudges, retain bitterness, harbor resentments, feel sorry for ourselves, and cultivate the pity of others. Anything is better than just letting go. Good friends, I assure you, I know of what I speak.

Look what becomes possible when we just let it go. I would find what I am about to say hopelessly sentimental, unbelievable and unavailable to me and to you, except for one thing. Jesus struggled with letting go just as intensely as you and I. In his humanness he was frightened nearly to death as he thought about how he would endure crucifixion, to say nothing of how he would forgive those who betrayed and abandoned and pounded and denied and washed their hands of him and mocked and crucified. Yet on that cross, in the midst of unspeakable agony, that is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus forgave. “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” What startling words! Who would have expected it? “Father forgive them....I have been stabbed in the side with a sword. Forgive the soldier who thrust his blade. He did not know what he was doing. The crowd ridicules me and laughs at my pain, but, Father, forgive them for they are lost and afraid and do not know what they are doing.” Jesus could say these incredible things because he had been to Gethsemane and he had decided, “Not my will, but thy will be done.”

Crucifixion is common. It is even common for human beings to make their way to Gethsemane. However, Jesus may have been the only one who ever went to Gethsemane before he was crucified. Think about it. It’s staggering. Jesus forgave them while he was on the cross. I’ve known some pretty mature Christians who have been able to forgive some pretty terrible assaults. Stan Manierre was a close friend in Massachusetts. He was captured by the Japanese in World War II and spent 18 months in a POW camp being tortured. He faced starvation and suffered from unimaginable diseases. He did not forgive his tormenters while he was being tortured. He was released at the end of the war but he did not forgive his captors during the year he spent recovering in a Navy hospital. It took him five years, five terrible years of struggle atop the Mount of Olives, kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane, at first praying for vengeance, later praying for release from all the pain, until finally he surrendered his experience to God. Stan decided that God was the author of his life and that their must be meaning even in the horrible experience of a POW. He went to seminary. He became a missionary. He volunteered for an assignment in Japan. He served Christ in Japan for eighteen years. He arranged a face to face meeting with his prison guards. He forgave them.

I’ve known Christians who have forgiven spouses who committed adultery. I’ve know Christians who have forgiven the sexual abuse of a parent. I’ve know Christians who have forgiven betrayals, failures, prejudice, and all kinds of hate. I’ve know Christians who forgave 25 years of alcoholism and all the torment that went with it. But I know of no Christians who offered the forgiveness while the offense, the violation, the persecution, the defilement was going on. Dietrich Bonhoffer, a Lutheran Pastor, was imprisoned and eventually executed by the Nazis because he supported an attempt to assassinate Adolph Hitler. They said of him, seeing the way he carried himself in his prison cell, that he bore his cross with dignity and courage. But describing himself, Bonhoffer confessed the bitterness and rage that nearly consumed him. It was only with the greatest spiritual effort that he learned to forgive his captors.

Jesus went to Gethsemane before he was crucified. He placed his life in God’s hands and thus was prepared to forgive his tormenters even as he hung there in unfathomable pain. We go to Gethsemane, if we go at all, only after we have experienced crucifixion. We go when the bitterness and rage are consuming us. We go when we cannot stop blaming and complaining. We go to Gethsemane when our feelings of abandonment by God and our feelings of hatred towards whoever it was that hurt us are threatening to destroy our souls. Vengeance and hate and anger and self-pity can absolutely ravage our lives. We go to Gethsemane after we experience crucifixion in order to learn to look at our experience through the eyes of God.

In Gethsemane, seeing our lives as God sees them, learning to surrender to God’s will and God’s way, we are shown something that few of us have any desire to see. But if, when we are praying and wrestling with God in Gethsemane, we see what God has in mind to show us, it becomes immeasurably easier to surrender. What I see, in addition to myself as the crucified one, is myself as the crucifying one. Jesus Christ was crucified, but he crucified no one else. You and I, along with all other human beings, are notorious crucifiers. We regularly inflict suffering on the innocent, just by seeing the world through our own selfish point of view, just by failing to see beyond our own noses, our own race or religion, our own country. We crucify the poor with our greed, we crucify the ones we love the best because we are wounded and forget that others are wounded too. Majorities crucify minorities. The supposedly righteous crucify the apparently guilty. In Gethsemane we see everything and everyone the way God sees. We see that we share the blame. We see that the sin of each one of us--no matter how pure we think we are--was sufficient to send Jesus to the Cross. As convicted but forgiven people, we learn to pray, “Father, forgive them--even those who have injured me--for they did not know what they were doing.” Because Jesus forgave me, I was saved from a life time and an eternity of hell. I can-- though it will be a struggle--I can extend that forgiveness to another:

Even my brother
Even my enemy
Even my wife
Even my captor
Even my employer
Even my would be destroyer

Because I know that the destroyer cannot destroy me, if I go to Gethsemane, if I let God’s will be done, if I will to forgive.

Paul teaches us that we spend a life time growing to a greater measure of the fullness of Christ. One meaning of this instruction--a meaning that does not sell well in a society hell bent on conspicuous consumption and personal pleasure--is that as we mature as Christians, crucifixion will be more frequently and more deeply part of our lives. Crucifixion, leading to forgiveness, leading to resurrection and new life, is God’s way of redeeming a fallen creation. You will never hear popular religion singing a jingle like, “Come be crucified with me!” But Jesus sings it over and over again. Jesus sings this song until something amazing begins to happen. Growing closer and closer to the full measure of Christ, the time lapse between our experience of crucifixion and our offer of forgiveness to our enemy begins to decrease. As we mature in Christ we find ourselves, when we are attacked, going to Gèthsemane sooner. We find ourselves letting go of the anger and the bitterness and the hurt sooner. We come closer to Jesus, until one day we may find ourselves offering forgiveness even as the injury is being done to us. We stop experiencing insults and attacks personally. They become, instead, opportunities for God to be glorified in our lives. Would it not be interesting to discover one day that God has allowed these experiences of crucifixion in our lives exactly for that purpose--for our spiritual transformation and God’s glory. Would it not be interesting to discover one day that the painful experiences we fear the most are God’s greatest gifts of love to us, given for the salvation of our lives and the salvation of the world.

You and I may find ourselves a very long way from accepting crucifixion in such a way. The very idea that we could value our experiences of suffering, that we could forgive even as we are being abused, may seem to be a fool’s wish. But this is the spiritual destination of our lives. Jesus has already shown us the way. All we have to do is follow.

So be it. Amen.