By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, RectorA man hangs on a cross. The pain is unimaginable - even by those who inflicted it. Perhaps it’s because they couldn’t imagine it, that they were able to accomplish it. I wonder if anyone who has endured agony can willingly inflict it on someone else without reliving it, without experiencing it again.
When Jesus hung on the cross he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” They didn’t. On the different levels that people exist, they didn’t know. Physically, none of the Centurions had experienced the pain of crucifixion and drove the nails in without knowing what they were doing. The people gathered around had no idea what it was like to be ridiculed unjustly and tortured. They didn’t know what they were doing. The disciples hadn’t been betrayed and set up for a mock trial, and they didn’t know what they had done.
Perhaps it’s because none of them knew that they were able to do the horrible things they did. And still Jesus forgave them, because they didn’t know. Or rather, they didn’t fully know.
Two thieves hung on either side of him. One ridiculed him in the same way the crowds did. The other asked to be remembered, finding in his pain a relationship with Jesus that he didn’t have before. It’s a curious scene between three men, presumably strangers, now bound by history and the common experience of hanging on a cross.
That grim tableau is a microcosm of our world as well. People causing pain to others in crimes and battle without really knowing the fullness of their actions. I wonder if Presidents who have experienced war are more reluctant to declare it than those who have not. I wonder if those who have experienced crime committed against them, or the pain of attack could ever easily commit such things themselves. But in our world, people do things all the time that create pain and havoc while not really knowing what they do from an experiential level.
And in relationship to Jesus, there are people who hang in pain that reflect the reactions of the two thieves. In the moments of their most excruciating pain, some turn toward God while others turn away.
The focal point for all of this is Jesus. The one who hangs in the middle with arms outstretched to gather into one embrace those who ridicule and those who come for comfort. Earlier in his interview with Pontius Pilate, Jesus said that he came into the world to testify to the truth. Pilate asks “What is truth?” For Pilate, truth was no doubt malleable, subject to the spin given it. What people believe to be true is not always truth. People in positions to create the impression of truth understand this and use it to their advantage.
How threatening it is to have someone who embodies truth. That same person will become a light that shows where lies have been told. The truth of Jesus is the unconditional love of God. It’s not earned, or stolen, sold or won. It’s freely given. Because he told this truth, because he lived this truth, because he was this truth, he was arrested and killed. It was too much to bear. I think there is a secret fear common among people - that we are not lovable. Many people have a hard time accepting compliments because they don’t believe the one giving the compliments. Others have a hard time accepting love, because they do not believe themselves worthy of love, or they are hiding some secret truth that if the one offering love knew, would withdraw that love. The simple truth of being loved gets very complicated. As Jesus embodied a truth almost unbearable to accept, he was taken and hurt.
But he forgave them, because they didn’t know what they were doing. He forgave them, because they didn’t know what HE was doing. But in the end it was not in their power to kill him, but it was in his power to help them live.
When I was a teenager my uncle was working on a house from a ladder and fell. He was hospitalized and hurt his back very badly. I drove my grandmother, who at the time was in her late eighties, to the hospital to see her son, who was in his early sixties. I remember being so struck by her quiet tears as she held his hand, saying in a voice meant only for herself, or perhaps it was a prayer - that she could be the one in that bed who was hurt so that her son could be alright.
A mother’s love is a powerful thing. And the desire to relieve the suffering of her child even at her own physical expense is extraordinary. No matter how old the mother, or how old the child the love remains the same.
She was not able to take the place of her son, but that story has become a way for me to understand the depth of love that would have God take the pain of the world to himself as a way to relieve the suffering of humanity. I think the worst form of suffering isn’t even the physical as bad as that is. I think the worst suffering is to be without hope or love.
By knowing, by truly knowing what human suffering is, God enters our world and lives in a way that we cannot know. And in God’s willingness to bear that pain, to take the insults, ridicule and torture God not only embodies the truth of God’s love beyond our knowing, but also the hope that it’s still freely given in the forgiveness of that which we do not know. It simply is. God’s love simply is.
What we do here in story and song is to celebrate that love that would hang on a cross and still not be defeated. It is a wonderful truth. Amen.
©2010 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ
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