"Father, forgive them..."
Christ’s first word from the cross, and indeed, his first word to us, is “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” At first glance, this appears as a word of comfort. We are so ignorant of the ways we need saving, yet mercifully, Jesus offers us forgiveness and makes everything alright. But if this is all this word is saying to us, then the cross has been sanitized, sentimentalized, and stripped of its narrative passion in the name of a good atonement theory. As Stanley Hauerwas observes, “...as soon as these words from the cross are bent to serve our needs, to give us a god we believe we need, it is almost impossible to resist entertaining ourselves with speculative readings of Jesus’s words from the cross. For example, we think what a wonderful savior we have in Jesus, who, even in his agony, kindly offers us forgiveness” (Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ , 15). The error in such a reading is a grammatical one. On this reading the objects of divine forgiveness, th...