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In Luke, the 23rd chapter, I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered 26. "And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross to carry it behind Jesus. And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women, who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said,

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'Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, "Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck." Then they will begin to say to the mountains, "Fall on us," and to the hills, "Cover us." For if they do this when the wood is green,

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what will happen when it is dry? Two others also who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him. And when they came to the place which is called the skull, there they crucified him and the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. And Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." And they cast lots to divide his garments." And may God bless

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to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. One of the great and profound epistemological questions of the ages is this. How can we know things surely and certainly when things are always in the process of changing? It was Heraclitus, the Ionian philosopher of long ago, who said that no

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man can step into the same river twice. You may step into a river at one moment and then step out of it, and a moment later step back into it, but it is not the same river. The current has carried the water along, the movements of the water, the other effects of nature surrounding the water, change the water so that every minute it is different, every second it is different. It is

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constantly in a state of flux. You cannot step into the same river twice. You, as members of this congregation, have worshiped together on many occasions, and yet you are different from the last time you met, even if that last time were only this morning, because between this morning and now you have entered into conversations, you have seen things, read magazine articles,

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watched television programs. You are not the same as you were then. You have had experiences of pain or joy. You have expanded or contracted your horizons. You are different. We are all in a process of change. Now to this problem, let me add another, and that is that we tend to hear things not as they are, but as we are. I mean by that that our lives and our experiences influence

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the things that we hear so that we interpret them subjectively, internally, in terms of ourselves. A preacher stands in a pulpit and utters a single sentence. Two men are sitting side by side. One man hears the sentence, immediately agrees with it. He thinks this preacher is accurate, and so he trusts what follows. The man sitting beside of him, because of his experience, thinks that this

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sentence from the minister indicates some kind of prejudice or bigotry or intolerance, and so his defenses come up, and everything that comes from that pulpit from that point on is subject to the most careful inspection. Now only one sentence was uttered, but each of the men heard the sentence, not in terms of what it was, but in terms of what they were. We do not hear what is, we hear what we

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are. Two truths, then. All things are changing, including us, and we hear in terms of our own experience. Bearing them in mind, I would ask you to think with me about the first word which Jesus uttered from Calvary's cross. Now I know that you have heard this word preached upon before, perhaps many times before, and the word itself is unchanged. It is precisely the same today as it

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was when our Lord first uttered it. I also am wise enough to know that there is nothing I'm going to say tonight that is going to shed any particular light upon this word. I don't have the intellectual candle power to bring to it dimensions beyond your previous understanding. The word has not changed, and I will not be able to change it, but we have changed. We are all

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different. What I'm hoping tonight is that the old will become new to you, because you are older, and therefore newer. You see, you come to the cross differently this year than you have ever come to the cross before, and it is precisely to that degree of difference that I make my appeal. Think with me then of Jesus' words, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

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The words were probably uttered as the cross was hoisted into the air and then jammed jarringly down into the earth. Jesus had already been derided, he had been mocked, he had been beaten, he had been crowned with thorns, he had been forced to carry his cross as far as he was able to carry it, and then he was crucified. Now the Latin word for cross is "crux." It's the center

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syllable in our word "excruciating." And surely one of the most excruciating moments on the cross was that moment when suddenly the beams were lifted up into the air and the weight of the whole body suddenly fell upon the nails, and then, to further aggravate the pain, it was jammed down into the soaked sod. At that moment, Jesus must have seen the whole world

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before him in a dizziness of hurt, and his very body must have been like one great nerve aflame with agony. And in the midst of that, he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." It's astonishing, isn't it, that he should call God "Father." Most of us, let's be frank about it, would respond quite differently. When we are in situations where we see good being

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trampled, where we see things that are right and proper being smashed, when we find the prosperities of our lives suddenly turning into adversities, we have a tendency to cry out or to retreat into cynicism and sullenness. We pray, "God, why did you let this happen to me?" But Jesus prayed, "Father." Once John Wesley was talking to a minister who was very bitter about

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the way in which God was managing his life, and he was railing against God, and Wesley said to him, pointing to a cow in a nearby pasture, "Why is that cow looking over that wall?" And the man, rather impatiently, said, "I do not know." And Wesley said, "The cow is looking over the wall because the cow cannot see through the wall. When you confront difficulty, when you are walled in,

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there is no value or virtue in cursing, in heaping invective upon your circumstances, in wallowing in self-pity. The thing to do," Wesley said, "is to lift up your eyes. Look up to the God who made you and who will sustain you." That's precisely what Jesus did. He said, "Father." And his marvelous confidence in God was justified. I mean, it must have seemed to him at that moment,

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as if God had lost his grip on the steering wheel of the universe. Everything seemed to be out of joint. The whole creation seemed on the edge of the pit of insanity. The most criminal act of history was being performed. The only begotten, perfect Son of God was being put to death. And in the midst of this, in the midst of the raging craziness of this, Jesus prayed, "Father." Wonderful

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confidence. And out of that confidence, God brought forth history's brightest hope. I was in the Shadyside area a couple of weeks ago, visiting a potter's shop. And I saw something which led me to a thought I had never thought before. The potter was cooking some pots in a kiln, and it was at full heat. Meanwhile, he was busy about another project. And it suddenly dawned

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on me that while that pot was there in the midst of all the flame and darkness of the kiln, and producing the colors that would be a part of it, the silver and the red and the cream and the brown that would adorn it, as that was going on, the potter could not see what was happening. Well, just so there are times in our lives which are shadowed, burning times, flaming times, red-hot

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times, times when we think that evil is enthroned in our experience, times when we cannot see God and think we cannot see the things of God. But remember, as a potter, God brings beauty out of the fire. He brought salvation out of the flaming heat of Calvary. Jesus prayed, "Father," and his prayer was answered. Now, the center, of course, of Jesus' prayer is this word "forgive." And that's

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a word which we accept rather casually from our Lord's lips. After all, we think to ourselves Jesus was well known for his forgiving spirit. He taught his disciples to forgive, even his enemies. He said that they should forgive seventy times seven. That is an infinite number of times. And we would expect that Jesus would demonstrate the same forgiveness that he taught. We would

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expect him to show, even on the grim gray top of Calvary, the same forgiveness that he talked about on the sunny slopes of Galilee. We think of Jesus and forgiveness rather easily. We're rather like Heinrich Heine, the romantic German poet who said, "Certainly God will forgive me. After all, that's his business." But the fact of the matter is that it's very difficult to understand the

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forgiveness of what Jesus speaks here. Because, you see, if that forgiveness is the kind of forgiveness that we think of when we meditate upon that word, then it is totally inconsistent with other things that Jesus had to say that day. I mean, if what Jesus is saying to God is this, "God, wipe their slate clean. God, don't hold this against them. God, say that all is forgiven.

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Render a judgment, not guilty." If that's what God is asking, then this prayer of his is not at all consistent with what he said just before he prayed it or just after he prayed it. The words of Jesus, which immediately precede this prayer, are the words that he uttered to some women who were weeping over his plight as he was carrying his cross to Calvary. And Jesus turned to those

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women and he said, "Don't weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are coming when you will say, 'Blessed is the person who never brought a child into this world, the person whose breasts have never given suck.' A day is coming when you will cry out to the mountains, 'Fall on us! It is better that we be slain in an avalanche than to live in such a time.'

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And you will cry out to the hills, 'Cover us!'" Now, these are words of very severe judgment. These are words of awesome power and thunder. Jesus is prophesying a terrible punishment to be visited upon Jerusalem. Now, are we to suggest that suddenly on Calvary he changed his mind, that he prays to God to forget all of this and to take this judgment and this punishment away,

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in fact to reverse the prophecy which he has just made? Are we to believe that Jesus, just minutes after he uttered those thunderous words, changes his mind and asks God to reverse all that he had previously stated? I find it difficult to believe that. And notice also that if we think of these words of Jesus in terms of easy forgiveness, they are also not consistent

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with what he said after praying, "Father, forgive." For notice how the prayer concludes, "Father, forgive, for they know not what they do." The justification for forgiveness is ignorance. They don't know what they're doing, so forgive them. The fact of the matter is that the Scriptures consistently teach that ignorance is no excuse for sin. The Bible teaches that God's law is

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made clearly evident to anyone who has eyes to see, and therefore when someone chooses to do what is wrong, they do not do it out of ignorance. They are therefore without excuse. Evil, the Bible says, is man's own choice and convenience. He knows what he's doing. I get no particular pleasure out of saying this, but it would be blasphemy for me to stand in this desk and say anything other.

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When we lie, we know it. When we gossip or are selfish, we know it. When we are lewd or lascivious in our thoughts, when we are prideful, when we steal the ideas of another's mind or the products of another's hands or the sweat of another's brow, when we swear or are mean, when we nitpick and tear apart other people's efforts to build the kingdom, when we ignore the needy,

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we know what we're doing. When we keep silence in the face of injustice, we know it. When we are prejudiced, we know that. When we are petty or jealous or greedy or lazy, we are fully aware of it. When we are self-indulgent, we know what we are doing. When we parade a faith which we know within our own hearts to be so much less than we pretend it to be, we know that. When we strut

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about in the garments of godliness, covering over the threadbare robes of our own hypocrisy, we know what we are doing. We know it. How then could Jesus pray, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." For Jesus to have meant an easy forgiveness here would be for him to subvert the very justice of God. And make no mistake, that's what we are talking about here. We are

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talking about the justice of God. We are very quick and easy to speak about the love of God. We are not so quick to speak about his justice. And yet we must speak of the two together. For you see, God's love is not some sloppy sentimentalism. It's not some pat on the back and do a little bit better next time. God's love is a tough love. It is a love that has

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expectations. It is a love that has requirements. Any parent who is worthy of the word "parent" has expectations for the children that he or she loves, and they correct and admonish and direct those children in terms of how they respond to the direction that they have been given. Well, God is the most perfect of all parents, and therefore God disciplines his children,

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and that's what his justice is. Now, it is not God's delight to bring his justice to bear upon his children, but the inexorable law of the moral order, the way in which God has made the world, requires that it be so. God's justice, you see, has never been dictative, but it is altogether inevitable. Think of it like this. Suppose that you bought a new car, and in the glove compartment

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is an owner's manual. It tells you how much air there should be in the tires and how often you should change the filters, and you know the kinds of things that are outlined there. Now, suppose you don't know that the owner's manual is there. Or, suppose that you do know it's there, but you pay no attention to it. You completely disregard it. Take your choice. You can say you

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are ignorant of the fact that it's there, or you choose to ignore it. In any case, or in either case, the company that made that motor car is not going to come and punish you for what you are doing with regard to its owner's manual. But you will nonetheless be punished, and you will be punished because the automobile is going to fall apart. That is built into the very nature of

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things. God has so made the world that when we choose to ignore the rules, or knowing them to fly in the face of them, He does not come against us in wrath. But He has so built His law into the nature of things that when we go against that law, we don't break the law, we break ourselves against it. The awfulness of God's judgments is this. It is the horror of the effect of our own

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sin. We say that we want a society that lives on the basis of law and order. So does God. And so He has built into the nature of the world law and order. And when we go against it, we experience His wrath. And His wrath is not some emotion. It's not God losing His temper. It is the principle of inexorable justice. So when Jesus prays here, "Father, forgive," this isn't some kind of blank

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check. This isn't a plea for God to be permissive. To believe that would make His words inconsistent with other things He said that day, inconsistent with the teachings of Scripture, inconsistent with the nature of the human story, inconsistent with what we know about God, and inconsistent with what we know about justice and truth. So what does Jesus mean when He says, "Father, forgive"? Well,

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there is a secondary meaning for this word "forgiveness," which explains what Jesus meant. The word can mean, when it's used in Scripture, "to delay judgment." In other words, Jesus was praying, "God, don't count them not guilty, for they are guilty, but give them time to repent of it. Father, I'm not asking for some casual and cheap grace. What they have done is to kill your

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only begotten Son. But Father, let there be time for your Spirit to move in their hearts, that they might repent, that they might come to their senses, that the ones who have turned away from me might now turn to me, turn their back on their sin. And when they do that, then, then, Father, forgive them." What Jesus prays for here is not for our absolution. He prays for delay, and He prays

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that we might have time. I have a friend who's a television and radio entertainer in Australia. He spends most of his time on those media, but he occasionally itinerates. And he was visiting in the home of one family. They were sitting on the front porch one night, and it came time to retire. And as they went to the door, the father in the family reached into his pocket and took out a key,

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and bent down and put it under the mat in front of the door. He said, "This is for my son." And Ron said to him, "Well, I've known you for years, and I never knew you had a son." "Oh, yes," the man said, "I have a son, and he left home many years ago, and we have never seen him since. And we have sent messengers and messages to places where we thought he might be, but he has never

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once been in contact with us. But when he was a boy, we always put the key under the mat so that if he came home late, he would be able to get in. I still put the key under the mat every night, so that if he should come, he can find it there and know that he is still welcomed, and he is still loved." What Jesus prayed on Calvary was this, "Father, for a while longer, leave the key under

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the mat. Do not deny welcome to those who return. Leave the key under the mat. Their leaving is wrong, for they have scorned you, and they have broken your love and your law, and they have hurt you, and they have hurt me, and they are hurting themselves, and it is wrong, terribly, unutterably wrong, and the price is being paid, and the price will be paid, but please, Father, for a little

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while longer, leave the key under the mat." And that leaves only one word in this one-line prayer of Jesus that we're studying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Who are the "them"? I mean, is it Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas and Herod? Is it the soldiers that crucified him? Is it the eleven disciples? Is he praying here for Judas or for the crowds that

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stood there howling? Is he praying for all those who are in positions of power and misuse it? Is he praying for all those who claim faith and do not really have it? Is he praying for all those who see evil and do nothing to correct it? When Rembrandt painted his greatest depiction of the crucifixion, he painted his own face on one of the figures in the crowd. For you see, Jesus was

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crucified by sin, and that means all those who sin had a hand in it. We are the "them." Please, do not say, "It was folks like us." It was not folks like us. It was us. I ask not for some vague theological affirmation. I'm calling for an acknowledgment of guilt. Let's not con our consciences. We can do that very quickly. I remember once at the college giving a test and

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catching a student cheating in the middle of the test, and I went up and confronted him with what he was doing, and this was his response, "You wrote too hard a test, so I had to cheat." I had a prostitute tell me on one occasion that she did not think what she did was wrong. She saw herself as a social worker amongst alienated males. We can con ourselves out of our sense of sin, or we

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can avoid it by our exaggeration. We're doing battle with the devil. We cry out and tell others what a battle we're fighting. "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa," and we are fighting with the dynamic powers of the universe, and we talk about this and plead for pity, and all the time we drag along behind us sniggling little trails of sniggling little sins. I don't have

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to catalog what is true about us. If he was killed by sin, then we were there as surely as if we held the hammer and the nails. And so he prayed, "Father, forgive Bruce, because he doesn't know what he's doing. Hold back on your judgment. Let there be time for him to repent." The Bible says, "He who says he is without sin is a liar, and the truth is not in him." So let us not fool

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ourselves with our pious respectability. Let us not wrap ourselves so tightly in the trappings of our wonderful lives that we see ourselves as without guilt. Let's not be blinded by our pipsqueak allegiances to our petty little principles. Let's not, this Lent, fail to see what's true about us, that we have sinned against God, and that his Son has died because of it.

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And seeing that, let us act. Let us head home while the key is still under the mat. While the key in answer to a dying son's prayer is still under the mat. Let us pray. Oh God, give us courage enough to face the truth about ourselves. Strip away our comforting illusions. Let us be, for as long as we can stand the sight of it, altogether naked before ourselves. And seeing

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how little we have made of how much you have given, lead us to confess and to rededicate ourselves to your Son, and to live a life that is somehow worthy of his dying. Oh God, by your Spirit, call us home while the key is still under the mat. For we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. [end]