Christ, Have Mercy Series

Insights on Forgiveness Easter 2023

The shortest chapter in the Holy Bible is right smack in the middle, and right in the middle of the book of Psalms, the songbook of the Second Temple and of the Church. It is Psalm 117, Laudate Dominum, and can be recited in less than 30 seconds. Praise the Lord, all you nations, glorify Him all you peoples; steadfast is His loving kindness toward us, and the fidelity of the Lord endures forever. That’s it. Easy to memorize; I use it as my rising prayer every morning, and suspect it’s as good a wake-up call as a cup of coffee, although I don’t drink coffee. Note the implied “because” in the middle. We praise Him because of His loving kindness, His hesed, and his faithfulness, in Hb, ‘emet.

Where are hesed and ‘emet most clearly shown in the NT? Jesus is being pounded onto the cross in the twenty-third chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel. Of the four evangelists, Luke is the teacher of forgiveness. His is the parable of the prodigal son and the loving Father. His is the parable of the Good Samaritan. And his is the memory of Jesus’s prayer to God as He is being painfully crucified: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. He’s praying for all kinds of people, but all of them, all of us, are sinners. All of us are responsible for that torture inflicted on the Son of God. All of us. He wants His Father to forgive all of us. After all, doesn’t John compare His actions to that of Abraham in almost sacrificing Isaac? God the Father loved the world so much that He did not restrain the murderous Romans. He allowed Jesus to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.

Many people, many kinds of people have either heard those words of Christ or read them. The Roman centurion and milites heard it as something new. Nobody had ever forgiven them for this before that Good Friday. Nobody. But this Jesus, who they knew had been arrested the day before and had healed the Temple soldier whose ear had been lopped off in the scuffle, seemed to be out of place on the hill of torture. But He didn’t scream His innocence as everyone else usually did. How did they feel hearing Christ’s words? How would you feel?

The centurion was probably the most awake of all the Romans. He had probably heard Jesus preach or teach sometime in the past three years. He knew the reputation of this Jew, of His healing and preaching of forgiveness and non-violence. He might have even felt bad about supervising His execution. How did he feel? We have a hint in Mark’s Gospel, for the man said when Jesus died “Truly He was a son of God.”

John was there, with Mary, Mother of Jesus. We have some clues to how John felt hearing those words of forgiveness, because he wrote about forgiveness years later, and he included the story of the adulterous woman whom Jesus saved from execution by stoning. John had run away from the authorities for a time the previous evening, but he did come back and witnessed the trial.

Farther away, amidst the crowd of onlookers, the chief priest and the Temple authorities were looking on and insulting Jesus, as if to add to His humiliation. But they heard the words of forgiveness. Even Caiphas, who had prophesied that Jesus would die for His people. Did he hear the words of forgiveness amid all the jeering?

Who are you most like in this scene? It really does not matter, because we are all responsible for Christ’s Calvary pain. We can be another John, or centurion, or Caiphas, or common soldier. It matters not. What really matters is our response. Let me suggest that an appropriate answer to Christ’s forgiving words is one that has been around the Church for many centuries, probably all the way back to shortly after the scene was enacted on Calvary. It’s one we should pray daily, multiple times, and certainly any time we do wrong: Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.