"We Do not Know what We are Doing" (First Sunday in Lent)

Luke 23:32-39

32 Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. 33 When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34 [Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."] And they cast lots to divide his clothing. 35 And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" 36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine 37 and saying, "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" 38 There was also an inscription over him, "This is the King of the Jews. 39 One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"

            I have a confession to make. I don’t know what I’m doing. Some of you might think that’s a pretty obvious statement, but it’s true. There are times, situations, when all I know to do is pray to God that something will come to my mind, something will make sense, something will show me the way to do what needs to be done. But so often, nothing happens, so I take a deep breath, mumble a quick prayer, and hope I do the right thing. I fail—a lot. I forget things; I overlook other people; I let time slip by and opportunities go unanswered. My failures sometimes hurt others, even though I don’t mean for them to or want them to. I stumble as I try to do the right thing, to find my way when there are no clear directions and the rules and expectations are constantly changing. If I’m completely honest, I feel like I get it wrong way more than I get it right. I’m learning how to navigate this journey called life, this path called faith, this vocation, but so often it seems I’m lagging just a step behind, too slow to keep up, and in the wake of my failures I see the faces of those whom I’ve let down, the faces of those who once looked to me for guidance, for a word of comfort or hope, the faces of those whom I failed to help because I didn’t know what I was doing.

            You see, most of my life I’ve been able to figure things out. That’s sort of how I got into automotive work. With a car, the worst you can do is break something, something that can be replaced with a new part. When I first started, I had no idea what I was doing, but I could figure it out, sometimes—most times—by trial-and-error. That’s how I learned a lot of things in my life, whether it was math, auto-mechanics, plumbing, navigating college life: I just sort of figured it out along the way, and if I failed I could learn from my mistakes. Life itself, however, isn’t always so forgiving when I don’t know what I’m doing. If I fail to speak, if I say the wrong thing, or if I speak too soon or too late, that opportunity may be gone forever. If I fail to act when an opportunity is there, if I can’t stop what I’m doing when it seems a more urgent need arises, or if I’m simply unaware of something important that may need my attention, relationships can be damaged and bridges unknowingly burned. As much as I want to be better, as hard as I may strive to do better, I still don’t know what I’m doing.

            Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying I’m incompetent, untrained, stupid, or lazy. I’m not offering excuses or looking for some way out of it all. I’m simply being honest. I have a feeling if we’d all be honest, we might all confess the same thing—we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re all just taking life a day at a time, trying to figure it all out, trying to stay out of the way, trying to make the world a better place, or simply trying to survive. We can put on airs and act as if we’ve got life by the tail, as if we’ve got it all figured out, as if the world is a simply put together puzzle and we’ve got the missing piece, but in the end, we really don’t know what we’re doing.

            As people of faith, we sometimes think we’ve got it all figured out, that we have all of life’s answers to all the hard questions at our disposal. Those things that seem most difficult, most uncomfortable we often dismiss with an answer of watered-down mystery, a bumper-sticker slogan that at least lets us grind away until the next tragedy, the next hardship. Often it seems we’re possessed by a misplaced sense of entitlement, the notion that since we have the answer, since we’ve got it all figured out, the rules no longer apply to us, the common condition of humankind is no longer one with which we are afflicted. Then there are those times, when I read the news reports, when I hear the stories, when I see the images of people of faith acting in ways so counter to that of the Christ whose name the bear that I cannot help but think to myself, “We do not know what we are doing.”  

            We can quote Scripture, citing the psalms, the prophets, the apostles, and even Christ himself, yet there will always be one who knows it better than we do, one with another interpretation, one with another verse to counter our position. We can split over polity, haircuts, worship style, or missions. We can argue with anyone who would disagree with us, and we’ve become experts at the art of arguing amongst ourselves. When we think we’ve got it all figured out, that we have all the answers, and the final interpretation, the truth is we don’t know what we’re doing.

            Now, that might sound hopeless to you, to think that I don’t know what I’m doing, that you don’t know what you’re doing, that together as people and a family of faith, we don’t know what we’re doing. But in a strange, upside-down way, I find hope in that reality. After all, I’m finding more and more in my life that God in Christ through the Holy Spirit often works in upside-down ways. But the locus of my hope isn’t found in some realization that we’re all helplessly crazy—no, my hope comes from this scene we’ve heard from Luke’s gospel this first Sunday morning in Lent. These are the first of Christ’s words from the cross, words spoken from the One whose love for us transcends our ignorance and inabilities. "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."

            It would be easy, I suppose, to think that Jesus’ words were for the criminals crucified with him, that Christ’s plea was for the forgiveness of those who so obviously needed it, those who had committed crimes and were at that moment paying the penalty for their maleficence. After all, the criminals didn’t know what they were doing by being crucified along with the Son of God. Of course, it would be just as easy to look at Jesus’ words as being meant for those who cracked the whip, drove the nails, and raised the cross. After all, they had no way of knowing that in the repetition actions of their job as crucifiers they were executing the very God who put breath in their lungs. We could say that Jesus was asking for divine forgiveness for the scoffers who berated him, for those who gambled over his clothes, for those who looked on as if they were seated in a theatre to be entertained. We could say that Christ’s words were meant for all of those captured by Luke in this brief, undescriptive narrative, but we would only be partly right, for while Christ’s words were indeed meant for those who had ears to hear them then, they are also meant for us here and now.

            While some may look upon the crucified Christ and see the wrath of an angry God, while others may see in the beaten, bloodied body of Jesus a vengeful deity desiring to levy every ounce of punishment deserved for humankind on his Son, I see something entirely different. I see the God whose love is so far beyond our comprehension that even in the midst of such agonizing, tortuous death, he grants forgiveness. I see a Christ whose power is shown in the frailty of flesh and bone, as with his dying breaths he still shows his love for us. In Christ death upon the cross I see the hope that can only come from such eternal, divine, real love. I see forgiveness, even though I don’t know what I’m doing.

            I still don’t know what I’m doing, but thanks be to God Christ forgives me anyway. We still don’t know what we’re doing, but thanks be to God that Jesus loves us anyway. We will try to know more, try to do better, try to be more of the people God calls us to be, and there will be times when we fail, times when we’ll pick the wrong side, times when we’ll wage the wrong war, times when we’ll miss opportunities, times when we may hurt others and they may not forgive us. Yet from that place where God’s love was magnified, that hill where the grace of God was proven true, that cross where Christ showed just how powerful the love of God is to overcome all our failures, we hear those words that make this table before us mean something, those words that make life worth the living (failures and all), those words that bring us hope in the eternal love of God despite our ignorance: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." Thanks be to God! Amen.