The First Word--This Lent

photo bt Jes / flikr

It must have been thirty or forty years after Jesus had died. That handful that had been there--seen his miracles, heard his stories--were slowly dying out. And so Mark and followers knew that if someone did not write the story down the gospel--the good news--would be lost. So four different writers--maybe more--put down in their own way--the Jesus' story. The centerpiece of all those writings clustered around Jesus' final days.

Last words are most important. Three of the gospels give us these words as they remembered them. Much later the church turned to Good Friday and worshippers would spend three hours looking at the cross and the words that Jesus said that day. Year after year pilgrims would listen to those last words.  Why focus on these gloomy words when they could have skipped them and moved on to Easter? I think these last words of Jesus touched something deep in their hearts.So like all those others we climb Calvary's hill once again duing our own Lenten season to listen closely to what he said and what, after all these years, those words still mean.

Nailed down, delirious with pain that first word they thought he said was: "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." As he looked down from his cross what was it that he must have seen. His broken mother and her tiny circle of friends. Dear John, the lone disciple would be there until the end. He might have remembered Judas dead by his own hand or the betrayer Simon Peter. Standing near but on  the edge of the crowd were the Priests with their long robes and folded arms. There must have been children there, too not knowing what was happening. And this first word took them all in: "Forgive them. No--Father forgive us all those things we do not know and all the things we cannot forget."

So like those other pilgrims we draw near and listen. It all began that day when young Jesus unrolled the Isaiah scroll and told his neighbors what he had come to do. He stretched out his arms and took in the poor,  the captives, the blind and the oppressed and all the broken-hearted. Oh, there would be so many. Forgive us all. Even those of us who cannot turn the other cheek or walk yet another cursed mile or push aside all the violence against the women and the little children and that long enemies' list we secretly carry. Jesus stretched out his arms and took them-and us--all in.

Most days we are too busy for this forgiving. It takes too many in.  Our arms only reach so far. Hate was not the word he used for all those sinners out there beyond the cross and the crowd and the town and the hills and even to the Roman rulers that put him there.

Forgive them--forgive us. During those stormy days of the civil rights movement, Dr. Robert Coles, a phychiatrist came South to study the effects of racial discrimination on the lives of the little children caught in the crossfire of simply trying to go to a good school. Rubye Bridges was the first little black girl to walk through the long, awful scary crowd in New Orleans.  Federal marshalls would hold her hand every morning and lead her safely to the school. Dr. Coles wondered what all that hatred and hostility had done to this little girl and so many others. He knew she ought to have trouble sleeping and eating and trying to carry on a normal life. Dr. Coles would meet with Rubye every day for a while. He asked, "Rubye are you sleeping all right?" "Yes, suh I'm sleeping just fine." Sometimes he would ask, "Rubye are you eating OK?" "Yes, Dr. Coles I'm eating all right." He could not understand Rubye's reactions. One of the teachers had told him that as Rubye walked through those lines of ugliness she seemed to be talking to herself. So the Doctor asked her one day, "When you are walking through that line and people yelled terrible things at you the teacher told me that you seemed to be talking to yourself. What were you saying?" "Dr. Cole, I say 'Father forgive them for they don't know what they are doing.'"

Maybe little Rubye had heard those word first in her Sunday School or from her Pastor. But they really came first from a dark afternoon on a Friday that would come to be called Good. No wonder Carly Marney said this is a word of identification. He is with us all. So we listen once again: "Father forgive them-us--for we know not what we do." So the church kept these words knowing that if that forgiveness would seep down into the troubled places of our lives--it might just become the healing word we all need.

photo by Lawrence OP /flikr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com