LENT 2025 = PART ONE

1. FATHER, FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO. 

 This Lenten season, we at A Vivid Life, are focusing on what is the central fact of the Christian faith, and that is the cross of Christ. The words of the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth come to mind: For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1: 18) For the next 40 days we will keep our focus on the cross by each week focussing on one of the seven last words Jesus spoke from the cross that Friday.

 Among the horrors of crucifixion, there is the public humiliation and physical suffering of Jesus. The soldiers blindfolded and slapped him across the face, jammed a crown of thorns on his head and made him a mock king. People stood and watched this, sneering at him, saying, “He saved others, let him save himself,” and shouting, “Crucify him, Crucify him.” Add to this the physical suffering he endured, to the extent that another had to be forced to carry his cross.

 Amid these horrible circumstances, his first word from the cross, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, is powerful, unexpected and utterly remarkable. As Christians, followers and disciples of Jesus, we are well-acquainted with his command to forgive our enemies – those who persecute, mistreat and mock us. Here, Jesus demonstrates it in the most harrowing and severe circumstances imaginable. It forces us to stop and ask, has anything worse than this happened to us that we can ever say, I cannot forgive? And always, we have to keep the Lord’s Prayer at the back of our minds: Forgive us our sins as we forgive others.

 In what is known as his first words from the cross, the word Abba – Father grips one. Not only is this the word Jesus taught his disciples to use when they prayed, but it is also the same word he had used a few hours earlier in the garden: Father if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.

 And then there is ‘them‘: Father, forgive them. One cannot help but ask, who is included in them? You could say the Roman soldiers pounding the nails in or the chief priests and the Pharisees who plotted this. Maybe it includes Pilate, the crooked judge who knew Jesus was innocent and yet condemned him; perhaps the disciples, who all ran away; maybe even the one who betrayed him and the one who denied him. There is also the crowd that mocked him and shouted: Crucify him! I believe they are all included in the ‘them.’ But you and I know it does not stop here; we understand we are part of the ‘them.’

 The first words of Jesus reaches all the way from the cross into 2025 and our own lives, private dilemmas and sins.

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