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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion February 18, 2006 Jesus Forgives from the Cross |
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FRONTLINE DEVOTION FOR Saturday, February 18, 2006 by Susan Hill
Thinking of this scene enticed me to consider a snapshot of it …but … what is wrong with this picture? There’s something apparently unholy here. Here we see a beaten, humiliated, but guiltless crucified Jesus Christ, Son of God, Messiah, dying inch by inch between two likewise crucified criminals. How could it be that the same Jesus whose authority conferred “a kingdom” and “thrones judging the 12 tribes” (22: 29-30) upon his apostles was brought so low? How could this man of authority who cast out demons have had no power to save himself from such obvious evil? How could this loving healer deserve the wrath of Israeli church and society and, moreover, a death sentence leading to his bizarre, painful execution? Even the crowd (mob) is stunned. From their point of view, they wanted to see Jesus “do a little sidestep” as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Jesus Christ Super Star puts it. They wanted him to snap his fingers, to say a kingly word, to enact a miracle, to somehow declare his innocence and claim his mighty position. From a purely human perspective, none of this makes sense – now or then.
But … let’s move the camera lens. Let’s look at the scene from Jesus’ line of sight. We can imagine Jesus looking down from the cross to see the crowd of onlookers that had cried out to Pilate for Jesus’ death and now gathered to witness it. Jesus would have seen the Roman soldiers who enacted his death sentence. He might have observed the women and men who were his followers; those who had fallen asleep when he was in the garden or denied knowing him in the public marketplace but now wept with remorse and sadness at his bleeding feet. According to Luke’s writer, all these people within Jesus’ line of sight and all the fellow Israelis they represented had failed to adequately grasp the presence of God’s self in Jesus. Instead of embracing Jesus and his teachings, they killed him. This picture is one of chaos, of hopelessness, of a doomed, godless society … the world gone wrong. And out of all this, however, Jesus simply says, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (vs 34) Jesus had a different picture in his head than the obvious one … the one we see … a different interpretation of the scene in front of him than the one that a camera would be unable to record. Jesus had a vision of God’s plan for our salvation, and that plan included the forgiveness of Israel’s and the world’s deadliest sins.
Take a snapshot in your mind’s eye now of the chaos of our world today or of the storms and tragedies in your own life. Without including Jesus and the will of God for our good in those pictures, we may be overcome with visions or prophecies of bleakness like those facing the daughters of Jerusalem in Luke 23: 28. With Jesus, however, these still-lifes take on a dynamic dimension because our errors are forgiven even in the epicenter of our worst actions. With Jesus, the focus of our subject matter changes from betrayal, pain, and death to new life and new possibilities. Let’s let go of the snapshot mentality that only freeze-frames a moment in time and think of making a film that records continuously. Life in Christ is more about waking up every morning with a new sense of opportunity because God who came to us in Jesus Christ on the cross forgave and forgives the past. There’s something blessed about this motion picture!
Prayer:
Dear God who created us in your image, we beg your forgiveness for the sins of yesterdays, today, and tomorrows. We also thank you for the enormous sacrifice of your son, Jesus, who came to the earth in human form and died a human death so that we might live each day with renewed hope. Enable us to live brilliantly in faith. Amen.
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