Christ the King, Father, Forgive Them

Christ the King: Father, forgive them

In 1979 at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery – where Martin Luther King Jr. pastored in the 1950s – Governor George Wallace made an unpublicized and unannounced Sunday morning visit to the congregation. The governor was pushed up the aisle in his wheel chair and spoke: "I have learned what suffering means. In a way that was impossible before my shooting, I think I can understand something of the pain black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness."

Today we complete and crown the church year by celebrating this feast of Christ the king.  We bless and exalt Christ as our king, not because of power or prerogative or royal prestige.  We bless Christ as our king because of forgiveness.

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. These are Jesus’ first words from the cross. What powerful words. What awesome words. Rather than calling on God to damn and punish those people below who were crucifying and killing him, Jesus’ heart was full of compassion for them, rather than rage. The normal thing would be to swear, curse, use foul language at his tormenters but Jesus’ heart was just the opposite. Jesus called out for God to forgive his tormenters rather then to punish them. Jesus was all about forgiveness.  A translation of the word, forgiveness, is to “let go.” Jesus forgives our sins; Jesus lets go of our sins.

Forgiveness is letting go of feelings of resentment or anger against another person for offences and mistakes, letting go of the need for punishment or restitution. Forgiveness is given without any expectation of compensation, and may be given without any response on the part of the offender (for example, one may forgive a person who is dead).

Forgiveness is letting go of the intense emotion attached to incidents in our past. We all have traumas—even if we can’t remember and don't fully understand them—even if some incident, some words or events happened in the distant past, our responses live on in our subconscious memories and even our bodies.  We have wounds we know and wounds we can’t even admit to ourselves. 

Forgiveness is the only healing for our wounds, big or small. No one can make us forgive. We only forgive when we realize we need it.

 Forgiveness is letting go of our grudges and resentments, our hatred and self-pity, because they don’t make us happy. We no longer need to be the victim.

Forgiveness is accepting that nothing we can do to punish  will heal us.

Forgiveness is letting the pain go, letting the offenders be and accepting a new way of perceiving the hurt. Forgiveness and moving on gives us a feeling of liberation.  We grow wings, we gain energy, we taste shalom.  We become happy and content and able to make others happy.

Do you know how to trap a monkey? A monkey trapper sets coconuts at the bottom of the coconut tree, but those coconuts have holes drilled in them, holes about the size of a monkey’s fist. In other to get the white meat in the coconut, the monkey squeezes his hands down into a fist and slips his squeezed fist into the hole in the coconut and when his fist is inside the coconut, the money’s hand expands and grabs the white coconut inside. The hand is now full of coconut meat. The only way a monkey becomes free is to let go of the coconut. The only way we as human beings ever become free in life is to let go… to let go of the way our parents have hurt us in childhood, let go of the pain of a past marriage, to let go of all the mistakes we have made. The only, and there are no exceptions, the only way to freedom is to let go of all the hatred and anger inside about wrongs I have done in the past or wrongs others have done to me. From the cross, God lets go of our sins.   

On the cross, Jesus, our king forgives us and teaches us to forgive.  Once he had taught that we needed to forgive our sisters and brothers at least seven times.  Now from the cross he teaches us to forgive those who don’t know what they do, those who do not repent, and those who will hurt us again.  Jesus showed that forgiveness of people killing you is not easy. It is not easy to love our enemies and mean people.  It is comparatively easy to forgive our friends during an argument or forgive our parents for  acting so ridiculously or forgive your children for doing stupid things. That kind of forgiveness is somewhat easy. But it is not easy to forgive your enemies and those people who kill you. That was not easy for Jesus. But that is what Jesus did from the cross. Jesus loved those who were hurting him and killing him. That is what is amazing for to love our enemies is a miracle of grace, a miracle from God.

Such a miracle happened for George Wallace and it drove him to seek forgiveness.  He comes close to being a living example of one of Martin Luther King's most enduring sermons, delivered on Christmas 1957 at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. It was on forgiveness as both a theological virtue and a practical way of life.

"Forgiveness," King said, "does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. ... While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community."

Today we celebrate Christ the king, because from the cross, Jesus removes all the barriers, the barriers we have with current members of our Church family, with former members of our Church Family, with future members as well, barriers with our daughters in law or sons in law, or mothers in law or fathers in law.  Today Christ the King forgives us and teaches us to forgive each other.