Paul N Walker CEC 11/24/13 Luke 23:33-43 “Forgiveness for the Blind Chicken”

There really are no words to fully address the horror of State Senator Creigh Deeds family tragedy of this past week. To be assaulted with a knife by your son, and to then to discover that your son has taken his own life is as nightmarish a situation as one can possibly imagine.

To have it all very much in the public eye only compounds the pain. By all accounts Deeds loved his son Gus very much, doing all he could do walk him through his struggle with mental illness. As David Toscano said, “Senator Deeds was very close to his son Gus, and has taken herculean efforts to help him over the years.” To have it all end this way is as awful as it gets in life.

As I said, there are no words to fully address this tragedy. As Senator Deeds said, “I am alive so I must live. Some wounds won’t heal. Your prayers are important to me.” But, if there were any solace to be found, it might come from the scene of another tragic death. Jesus, himself attacked and stabbed with a spear, hangs from the cross and prays for his tormenters saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

This gracious word can be a salve in the extreme cases, like the Deeds case. Dear God, forgive Gus, for he did not know what he was doing when he attacked his father, and he did not know what he was doing when he took his own life. And this gracious word can be a salve in so-called normal life, providing help for people who are far from perfect.

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” is Jesus expressing a profoundly compassionate appraisal of human nature. These words from our Lord are absolving words, comforting words, understanding words. These are the words that have the power to untangle the Gordian knot of our victimizing and victimhood, our deception and arrogance, our bigotry and solipsism, our sin, both mundane and devastating.

But there’s more in these words. Not only do we receive divine forgiveness for what we know we do wrong, we are forgiven for the wrong we do that we are not even aware of or over which we have no control. The subconscious lust and animus that tinge even our best works are met with a kind of blind divine love. In other words, we are totally forgiven not just for what we do, but also for who we are at our worst.

It’s not that Jesus doesn’t see what’s really going on. There is no denying reality, no turning away, no seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. He recognizes the terrible reality: soldiers taunt him, a thief mocks him, the stone wheels of the religious and political powers roll over his body and crush him. He does not have his head in the sand about sin and evil.

He does, however, see the sin and evil directed at him as the result not of maliciousness, but ignorance. In saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus is saying that the violence stems not from volition, but from a dark and incomplete view.

This is true of nearly every interaction between anyone anywhere. We cannot and do not know the “whole story” about a person. We cannot correctly assess a situation or a motive or an outcome to its full degree. When someone says, “I know exactly how you feel,” well, they don’t know exactly how you feel. We cannot know what or why someone does what he or she does. According to Jesus, we do not even know what we do. St. Paul says elsewhere – “I do not understand my own actions.”

Jesus said he spoke in parables so that “seeing they may not see and hearing they may not understand.” Doesn’t make much sense at first, does it? He did this so that we might be disabused of our own cherished assumptions about God, justice, religion, others, and ourselves. The Proverbs tell us that the “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” To fear the Lord is to realize how much you don’t know.

We’ve just marked the 150th anniversary of The Gettysburg Address. The speech was uniformly panned as a failure when Lincoln delivered it. It’s brevity and lack of rhetorical flourish was seen as an insult to the soldiers and to the occasion. One editorial said it “deserved a veil of oblivion.” Now, of course, everyone recognizes it as a masterpiece. As the Irish poet says, “The more you see the less you know, the less you find out as you go. I knew much more then, than I do now.”

I cringe at some of the things I said with such authority and assurance when I was first ordained. Sorry about that to all of you who were here at Christ Church when I was 31. Christie and I taught a Christian parenting course when we were in our mid 30’s and our oldest, and at that time only, child was 6. We prattled on and on about all the steps necessary to be an effective Christian parent. Finally, a kind but wise parishioner raised her hand and said, “Paul, we love you. But talk to me in about 15 years.”

Boy, was she right. Now, the only thing I’ll say to parents is that A) you’ll almost always go to bed feeling like a failure and B) the only recourse is to pray for God’s mercy for you and your children!

So, we act out of ignorance. Wouldn’t it be so much nicer on those around us if instead, we recognized our ignorance and didn’t act! But, in saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Jesus is also suggesting that His executioners and abusers act not only out of ignorance, but also out of an addled or bound will.

To us looking in, it appears that they know exactly what they are doing and saying. How could they be that mean, that terrible to another person? Yet to Jesus, they are the objects of prayer, people for whom He pleads to His Father for grace. He knows that these people are bedeviled by manipulating forces - within and without.

What are some of these forces? It’s well documented, for instance, that people who have been kicked down in life, become kickers themselves. Could it be that those who kick really know not what they do? That they are caught up in forces well beyond their control?

In a New York Times article called “What a Blind Chicken Can Teach Us About Humanity,” the writer describes the relationship between a blind chicken and the rest of the pecking order. “One effect of the blindness was on the omega (bottom of the pecking order) hen, fearful and isolated from her short lifetime of harassment. It didn’t take her long to realize that here was someone more defenseless than herself, and all her pent-up anger came out in merciless attacks, random and unprovoked. One could only be reminded of the bullied school boy finally getting his revenge.”

Let’s say you’re dealing not with a chicken but a child who explodes in anger. No amount of discipline or reasoning or punishment alleviates the outbursts. Or someone caught up in any kind of addiction, from alcohol to narcissism to child porn. The most gracious recourse is to pray, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Because we live in a world where we give and receive wounds that will not heal, it is sometimes impossible to forgive others, even if we might be given to see that they (and we) know not what they do. So it’s a good thing that the conversation in the scripture today doesn’t include us, except as objects of forgiveness. It is a prayer between Jesus and the Father, well removed from our control and judgment.

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” is finally a prayer for you and me, acting out of ignorance, caught up in powers that we can’t control and forces that control us. In so many ways we are all blind chickens. And, at the end of the day, God’s mercy and forgiveness are our only recourse in life and in death. As Senator Deeds said, “Your prayers are important to me.” And Jesus’ prayer, “Father forgive them,” is the most important of all.

Amen.