Any Last Words?

Jesus' final hours were excruciating, a new word created to describe the type of pain that crucified men endured, which litterally means "out of the cross."  Still, in His agony, Jesus had more to share.  Each of the last seven phrases that Jesus spoke from the cross have significance for us now.  Over the next seven days of lent, I want to share them with you.

“Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing”--Luke 23:34

It was not unusual for crucified men to speak while hanging on the cross, but their words were usually wild expressions of pain and pleading for release.  They would shriek and curse and spit at the spectators.  But Jesus, though suffering untold agony, neither cried out for pity nor cursed his crucifiers.  Instead, he lifted a prayer of intercession and forgiveness. 

He prayed for the Pharisees and teachers of the law who condemned him, the crowd that shouted ‘crucify him,’ the soldiers who mocked him, beat him, and nailed him to the cross.  These things can seem rather distant from us.  After all, we did not hold the hammer that pounded the nails.  Our hands did not weave together the crown of thorns and place it on his head.   Nor did they hold the whip that scourged him.

But we cannot forget that in that moment he also prayed for his betrayer, the denier, his disciples who fled and hid.  Perhaps these sins don’t feel so distant from what we ourselves have done at various times of life.  Perhaps if we’re really honest with ourselves, we will realize that our sin was felt in his wrists and feet when the nails were pounded in.  Our sin was placed on his head and beaten into his shoulders.

Jesus was in fact praying for us as well.  So often we do not know what we are doing.  Our sin was as present upon the cross as the sin of the soldiers or the crowd, the Pharisees or Judas.  So we pray ‘Lord, forgive us!  We have sinned against you in thought, word and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone.’  And still, the words of forgiveness echo from the cross to us today:  that we are in fact forgiven.