~Written around 5am on Good Friday, April 18, 2025~
At this time, Jesus is being tortured by Roman soldiers and made to carry his cross with Simon of Cyrene to Golgotha. That morning, it is said that he is finally hoisted up on the cross and from noon to 3pm, darkness descends on the land. This is powerful 3 hours, 3 hours where Jesus looks at those who mock him, 3 hours that he sees the women weeping for him, 3 hours bleeding, 3 hours hanging while blood and strength leave his body, and at no time did he snap at the ones who were doing this to him. Instead, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Today, on this Good Friday, I say to all the political leaders of all parties who ignore the least of these, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” They, in their ignorance and quest for greed and power are trampling over the least of these. They have forgotten the very people they claim to help on both sides of the aisle.
Jesus didn’t forget and they killed him for it. He was preaching a radical message that God was the center of the Universe not them, not Caesar, not Rome. This was dangerous and threatening to the Roman Empire just as those who speak out against this administration are experiencing.
It’s sad because this county was called a “sweet land of liberty,” and it feels like a land of constraint and restriction unless you are rich and by the world’s standards, powerful and dominating others.
Yes, Jesus bled and died though I feel it was less to do with the forgiveness of sins and more to do with the fight against the Empire that allowed the world to see that the power was inside of us all along. This power did not operate by world standards. It did not dominate or control. It liberated and lifted. It encouraged and supported. It was a power that all of us have not just some of us. It’s a power with rather than a power over as Meggan Watterson says.
Jesus died to show us that even though the world thinks it is killing us and packs us away for dead because we lack money or the power that it holds dear, we resurrect and are reborn anew. This rebirth refuels and reenergizes. This rebirth finds us shedding the things of this world like greed and being ego lead, realizing that it is an illusion we’ve bought into and instead, allows us to realize where our treasure truly lies. This allows us to ascend, and as we do so, we become a power that can’t be blotted out in the world, a shining light on the hill that cannot be hidden.
The Roman Empire realized this, too. That’s why in the 4th Century when Constantine realized that he could stamp out what he deemed a blot on society, it coopted it and bastardized it into the religion we see today, one that has forgotten what is at the heart of the teachings which is to love one’s neighbor as they love themselves.
Jesus helped to show us this love, and they murdered him on this day that we celebrate as Good Friday. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. It’s no longer simply a prayer, but a rallying cry for us all to remember the power that Jesus told us was within each and every one of us regardless of religion. It’s a rallying cry to tap into that power now to recognize that we, too, can experience a resurrection from this collective death and ascend right here in this body to bring forth a new heaven and a new earth. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.