And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments. And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!”

Luke 23: 33-35 ESV

It would seem that this scene on that unremarkable hill outside of Jerusalem on an early Spring day during those first years of what we now know as the 1st century A.D. was not much different from what we encounter in our world today. People were rude, disrespectful, angry, and either indifferent to the suffering before them or were seeming to gain pleasure from its severity. These characteristics that gave common flavor to the crowd that was watching that day’s spectacle of torture and death, are found in us still. Yes, we might be less overt, so more subtle; yet, we are not so much different. Our rhetoric is too often angry, dismissive, or belittling. We attack with the same sort of intended outcome as was that of the scourging that had taken flesh from the bone of Jesus’ back.

Our elected officials pass laws that protect the privileged and grant greater power to them while ignoring basic care for the weak and the disadvantaged. We dismiss entire segments of the world’s population with language that casts them in a subhuman light while we delight in the worldly majesty of leaders that speak these ungodly words. We build bombs and spend obscene amounts of our God given wealth on the means to exert violent control over others while refusing to spend pennies on feeding hungry children.

This is the world where we find ourselves in these highly evolved days of the 21st Century A.D. It would seem that in our eyes and more importantly in our hearts that in this Easter season we have Jesus right where we want Him to be. That is, He is still on that cross, our hard driven nails hold Him fixed to the wood so that we are not bound to follow His edict to love others without regard to their status, race, gender, or political value and to seek to be peacemakers above all else. Yet, Jesus has a different view of who we can be and of how we get to that place.

Despite what we think and how we act, Jesus still says,

“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

In Christ we all have forgiveness for even the most despicable, ungodly thoughts and actions. Yet, in order to enter into the rest that forgiveness grants, we must repent. That is, we must turn from the ways that we have been acting and reject those leaders to whom we have granted license to establish policies and practices that are contrary to Jesus’ teaching and His practice of living. Godly repentance means rejection of anger, disrespect, power seeking, and concern for self above care for others. It also means aggressively rejecting the leadership of people that will not join in the worship of the one and only true risen King, Jesus. He and He alone is our Savior. So, proclaim the risen Jesus as Lord and establish that fact as the core truth of your life!