I. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
We’re all looking for relief. That’s the thesis of a book that came out a year ago called The Big Relief by David Zahl. It’s a great book about the Christian understanding of Grace. Grace, how sweet the sound, but not always the easiest to explain. What Zahl does so well is to locate the concept of Grace within the experience of relief – the relief of finding out that the bill was sent in error and you don’t really owe another $1,000; relief when the physician tells you that your test results were a false positive; relief when you get the report card and find an “A” where you expected a “C.”
Relief isn't just a fleeting distraction from the problem, it’s when the pressure itself is removed – sometimes we call that salvation. Relief is when we feel freedom from the stress or anxiety – the Church calls this liberation. Relief is something like a relief pitcher coming into a baseball game, someone who will now take the responsibility of getting us across the finish line – we can think of this as deliverance. But there’s one more way of understanding relief – as in art, a relief is something that stands in contrast to its background. We might say that a relief, in this sense, is an alternative.
As we meditate on the Seven Last Words of Christ this evening, it will be with this sense of relief in pondering the mystery, horrors, and beauty of what was done for us and for our salvation on the Cross. And, in particular, these meditations will focus on the holy relief, the holy alternatives that the Cross sets before us.
The first word is “Father, forgive.” But who? The disciples who abandoned him? Pilate who ultimately sentenced him to death? The high priest, Caiaphas, who made it his mission to have him killed? The bystanders who watched this happen? Us, whose iniquity and sin were laid upon him? We don’t know, but perhaps that’s by design – the forgiveness is for us all.
The relief that Jesus gives us in these words of forgiveness is in showing us his most excellent way of love. James Kimmel is an attorney and professor of psychiatry at Yale who has written a new book called The Science of Revenge. His argument is that the deadliest addiction there is is revenge. He estimates that 20% of the population cannot resist the urge to get revenge, to harm others in an attempt to assuage their sense of being wronged or ashamed. And like all other addictions, even if we aren’t at the level of being diagnosed as a “revenge-aholic,” it’s a dangerous substance even in its lesser forms such as gossip, insults, and intentional slights. As some have noted, seeking revenge is like drinking poison in hopes that the other person will suffer.
Our desire for revenge shows up in road rage, in an overly-litigious society, in cancel culture, in score keeping between spouses, in warfare, and in the way that retribution is becoming a hallmark of our politics. If anyone had the right to seek revenge, it is Jesus – rejected by his own people, betrayed by one of his disciples and abandoned by the rest of them, tortured by the state, misunderstood and slandered by his people, and coopted and domesticated by the Church that claims to have him as its head. And yet, Jesus does not seek revenge but rather uses his dying breath to say “forgive.”
And so it is. We are forgiven, by his wounds we are healed. Jesus shows us a holy alternative to seeking revenge and retribution. To forgive means to let go of score-keeping, to let go of playing the zero-sum game of being in the right, to let go of holding onto debts that only impoverish us. And in letting go, we’ll find that we have hands that are open to more fully grasp the mercy and healing that Jesus so freely gives us all.
II. Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.
Though the disciples could not fathom where Jesus’ ministry was heading, Jesus always knew the Cross was the destination. This is why, earlier in the story, the disciples said to Jesus, “Lord, we do not know where you are going.” Jesus though tells them, “I will go ahead of you to prepare a place for you in my Father’s house, and I will take you there, so that where I am, there you may be also.” That state of ignorance about what Jesus is up to is the same state in which we exist.
At this word, our relief is from meritocracy, from deserving. When Jesus speaks to one of the people being crucified next to him, telling them that they will be with him in paradise, we’re used to that person being called a thief. It makes it sound like he was a shoplifter or some sort of petty criminal. But the word used in Scripture is more serious than that. Jesus is giving an entrance into paradise to a scoundrel, to an insurrectionist, to a menace to society. This criminal has done absolutely nothing to warrant a place in paradise, but quite the contrary. The only thing he has going for him is enough sense to know that Jesus will remember him.
In his letter to Rome, St. Paul wrote one of the most important truths that can ever be spoken: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” One of the Reformers of the 1500s wrote “The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary.” God’s love for us is not dependent on our ability to clean up our act, follow the rules, or make ourselves good enough. In fact, when it comes to Jesus, the word “enough” isn’t a part of the vocabulary.
We live in a world that has no place for this sort of Grace. In fact, showing this sort of Grace is often seen as reckless, irresponsible, and scandalous. To the previous meditation, we are accustomed to a world of vengeance, deserving, and accountability. To be sure, accountability has its place, but not when it comes to determining whether or not someone can receive dignity or mercy. I, for one, am quite relieved to know that being with Jesus depends not on what I’ve done, but rather what he has done.
III. Woman, here is your son… Here is your mother.
In 2025, the famed actress Demi Moore was on the cover of People magazine’s “Word’s Most Beautiful” issue. In an accompanying interview, Moore was asked what she is most afraid of. She responded, “What scares me is that I’m going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I’m not really lovable. That I’m not worthy of being loved, that there’s something fundamentally wrong with me.” Two weeks later, she checked herself into rehab to get help.
Her great fear is one that many of us have – the fear of being abandoned and alone, which Jesus relieves us from. Crucifixion is a horrendous way to die. We’re used to seeing Jesus wrapped in a loincloth, but that’s artistic modesty. Jesus would have been stripped naked. The sense of shame, particularly in a culture that was far more modest than ours, was extreme. Jesus had already been beaten and flogged, suffering significant pain and blood loss already. From written accounts of crucifixion, we know that scavenger birds would often tear at the flesh of the person whose hands and feet were bound. And due to the weight of the body being suspended on the cross, drawing breath would have been, no pun intended, excruciating. Some scholars believe that asphyxiation was usually the cause of death on a cross. All this is to say – every breath, every syllable, every word spoken from the Cross would be painstakingly intentional.
This makes his words to his mother and to the beloved disciple so noteworthy. From the Cross, Jesus is creating a beloved community. With his final breaths, he gives us relief from ever being abandoned. In a world that values independence and rewards self-centeredness, Jesus establishes an alternative community grounded in mutual interdependence and an other-directed focus.
In some African theology, they speak about the idea of ubuntu – which is roughly translated as “I am because we are.” It’s a radical departure from the foundation of Western philosophy – I think therefore I am. In the community of Jesus, our being is found not in ourselves, but in community. Jesus uses his dying breath to teach us this lesson – that there is no way to be his disciple without being in communion with the rest of his followers. A 3rd-century bishop, Cyprian of Carthage, said “You cannot have God as your Father unless you have the Church as your mother.” Through the shame and pains of his Cross, Jesus establishes a new family, a family forged in his love, which relieves us from the fear of ever being unlovable or ever being alone.
IV. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Here we come to the heart, the center, of these last words of Christ. This is only sentence that more than one gospel attributes to Jesus on the Cross. Often called the “cry of dereliction,” Jesus is quoting the opening verse of Psalm 22. While readers of Scripture and theologians have struggled with what it means that Jesus felt forsaken by God and what that implies about Trinitarian theology, these are also gracious words of relief for us to hear.
In being brutally honest about his experience, Jesus relieves us from the need to be pious when it comes to prayer or calling out to God. Why exactly Jesus quoted from Psalm 22 at this moment, we can’t know for sure. There is an understanding what when you quote the first verse of something, you are calling to mind it in the entirety. Psalm 22 concludes with, “My soul shall live for the LORD; my descendants shall serve him… They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.” Perhaps Jesus is contextualizing his crucifixion within the wider understanding salvation history. Either way, he begins by naming the feeling of forsakenness.
The Law clearly states, “cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree” and crucifixion was, therefore, seen as not only exiling someone from the realm of the living, but from being considered human. To be crucified was not merely to be executed, but to be disregarded as a human. In Second Corinthians, St. Paul notes that “For our sake, God made the one who knew no sin to be sin.” Out of those depths, Jesus calls out to God in lament and asks, “Why have you forsaken me?”
There is room in our faith to yell at God and ask, “what for?” and “how long?” It is not unfaithful to show our pain to God. It is not wrong to lament before God – to name the brokenness we feel and the disappointment that God has not protected us in the way we would have preferred. Jesus is honest with God, and he grounds this honesty in his address to “my God.” Because even when we do not understand God’s ways, when we feel forsaken, when we are dealing with more than we can handle, God remains God with us and God for us. Jesus relieves us from worrying about being polite with God so that, instead, we can be honest and have God’s words of relief spoken into that brokenness.
V. I am thirsty.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus wrote in the 300s “That which he has not assumed, he has not healed; but that which is united to his Godhead is also saved.” Meaning that because Jesus was fully human, all of the human experience has been taken into God and healed. Every experience of doubt, pain, fear, frustration, as well as pleasure, joy, and gratitude is received into God’s very being to be blessed and perfected.
Again, Jesus is alluding to a psalm here, the Sixty-ninth in this fifth word. Jesus has described himself earlier in John as the “living water” and said that all who are thirsty should come to him. Yet here is the water of life saying that he is thirsty.
This shows us that Jesus was not, as some wondered in the early Church, just a image of God from on high, a holy hologram. They could not reconcile what it meant for the Lord of all Creation to be lacking anything, to be suffering. But, very clearly, we see that Jesus was not above humanity, and went into the very depths of what it means to be one of us. Jesus knows our pains, our sorrows, our longings – and redeems them all. Jesus’ thirst relieves us from wondering if God has compassion on us, if God knows what it means to be thirsty for justice, thirsty for belonging, thirsty for love.
When, at Christmas, we proclaim the truth of Emmanuel, of God-with-us, we really mean it. We see the depths of God-with-us here at the Cross. All that we are, all that we have, all that we long to be, and all that we are lacking – God knows these things and experienced them in the flesh of Jesus. The fullness of our humanity has been taken into God, meaning that God is able to meet us in whatever we are experiencing. And meeting us there, God will bless us and give us the relief of always being God-with-us and God-for-us.
VI. It is finished.
Some have said that the primary concern of our ancestors was physical survival. Diseases, enemies, and predators were a nearly constant threat. And so, at that time, the great comfort of faith was for a life cut short to be redeemed in God’s eternal life. But with advances in modern medicine, most of the time, we do not worry about mortality. Instead, we worry about meaning and if our lives will “add up” to anything. This is evident in poetry and theater, which instead of exploring the themes of death, explore the themes of what it means to be truly alive.
This is the great anxiety of our modern age – figuring out who I am and then putting that purpose into action. But our existential angst is misplaced because we’re put ourselves at the center of the story instead of realizing that the whole of our lives exist on God’s canvas. In Colossians, we read that “your life is kept safe with Christ in God.” No matter what misfortunes or failings befall us, we are, forever, secure in the love of God in Christ. With our lives lived as a part of God’s story instead of our own, we are relieved from ever needing to obsess about “figuring it out.” As Jesus consistently shows us, it’s all about love and a life lived in love is never one without meaning, purpose, or value.
When Jesus says, “It is finished,” this is what he means. “It is finished” is not about resignation or him saying “Well, the game is over.” No, the word used here is telos – which is one of those words that English imported directed from Greek, even if we don’t use it often. A telos is an ultimate purpose, goal, or aim. So when Jesus says that it is finished, he doesn’t mean it’s over; he means the goal of Creation is fulfilled in his Death. He tells his disciples that there is no greater love than that which lays down its life for others. Doing just that, Jesus becomes like the seed in one of his parables – it goes into the soil and, only then, is able to sprout new life. The purpose of Creation is fulfilled and realized in the Cross – as the eternal love of God is shown in its fullness.
This is the great paradox of the Cross – of Christus Victor – as it is sometimes called. That in this ultimate show of weakness and defeat, the ultimate victory of God is achieved and the grain of the universe is revealed to be love. As the hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” says, the Cross reveals to us a “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” When we live in the direction of that love, we are relieved from ever having to worry about living in meaninglessness.
VII. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
With the caveat that I have dozens of favorites, one of my favorite lines from the Prayer Book comes from the Eucharistic Prayer at a funeral – “for to thy faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body doth lie in death, there is prepared for us a dwelling place eternal in the heavens.” This is a truth that Jesus knows and shares with us to relieve us from having a sense of despair or hopelessness in the face of death.
One of the most faithful and audacious quotes about death that I’ve heard comes from the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay: “I shall die, but that is all I will do for Death.” Jesus is why we can be bold enough to not give Death any of our fears, anxieties, or live our lives in fear of it. As another poet has put it, “Death is a horizon, and a horizon is nothing but the limit of our sight.” Jesus allows us to see past that horizon and into his eternal life in which we have a share.
Again, Jesus is drawing from a psalm, this time the Thirty-first. After the Psalmist commends their spirit to God, a few verses later we hear, “My times are in your hand… Make your face to shine upon your servant, and in your loving-kindness save me.” The faith of Jesus shows us how to entrust our lives to God, trusting that nothing given to God will ever be lost. Yes, we will have heartache, we will feel forsaken at times, we will lament, and yet we are promised that, in the end, love wins. TS Eliot, quoting Queen Mary of Scots before her death, wrote “In my end is my beginning.” Jesus shows us there is an eternal wisdom to this confidence in the face of death; because we are confident that the end of all things is being made well in the love of God, we can interpret our failings, our frailties, our deaths as something short of the full story.
The final words of Jesus relieve us of despairing of death and hopelessness in the face the unknown. We commend our lives, our deaths, and everything in between to God in confidence. We can go “all in” with God because in Christ Jesus, God has gone “all in” with us and for us.
